Participant Driven Open Space Principles and Laws

Meg Salter meg.salter at sympatico.ca
Mon Nov 27 13:25:25 PST 2000


I too, in more traditional guided facilitation processes, ask the group to
define how they want to behave up front. What comes up is pretty
traditional - respect each other, listen, take breaks, etc. The beauty of
OS, as I see it, is that it defines unexpected norms, it puts people in a
different space, and it provides a strong container for what can be very
different views. Dialogue techniques can also serve for a group to unearth
how they want to behave - hopefully at a profound level - but it can take a
long time to get there.
Meg Salter
----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Ferretti" <dferrett at PLACER.CA.GOV>
To: <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 3:50 PM
Subject: Re: Participant Driven Open Space Principles and Laws


> If you did that (ask the participants to define groundrules) it would not
be Open Space. It would be something else. The beauty of the 4 Principles
and 1 Law (as I see it) is that once you state them and the theme, the group
is good to go!  Self organization around topics that people care about
really doesn't require anymore facilitation than that - Don Ferretti
>
> >>> "Francoise Coupal, Mosaic.net International"
<coupal at MOSAIC-NET-INTL.CA> 11/27/00 12:21PM >>>
> I am wondering if any of you out there on the list serve has ever
> facilitated an open space event where the participants themselves
determine
> the principles/laws that will govern their open space event.  Maybe this
> type of approach would build a sense of ownership as to what would be
> important to respect and would take into account different cultural
> priorities.  I have thought about Francis Gastman's email about her/his
> experience in Berlin (which I found very illuminating).  Maybe if there
was
> a space to consider key principles participants felt were important to
> respect during the Berlin open space event, something like the Law of Two
> Ears would have been deemed as important for all the participants to fully
> consider/respect.
> I use the concept of a Group Contract in non-open space events where
> participants are asked to define the ground rules they feel would be
> important to respect to ensure a successful workshop. We usually revisit
> the group contract every day to see how we are doing and if we need to add
> anything to the contract.
>
> Why not start an open space event asking participants to define the
guiding
> principles that will govern the Open Space?  Has this been done before and
> what were the results?
> Francoise
> ____________________________________________________
> Francoise Coupal
> Mosaic.net International, Inc.
> 705 Roosevelt Ave.
> Ottawa, Canada K2A 2A8
> Tel:  (613) 728-1439; Fax:  (613) 728-1154.
> Visit us on the World Wide Web at: http://www.mosaic-net-intl.ca
>
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