5 Hour OS

[Sharon Quarrington]

"Douglas D. Germann, Sr." wrote:

> As to the speaker, what if we had the participants decide when he should go
> on? Would they have enough sense of it early in the day?

Doug:

Good luck with your OS, I'm sure it will be a great experience for all
involved.

>From my experience in order to keep the energy working during your OS the
placement of your speaker is very important.  As soon as you introduce a
mandatory speaker the OS ends.  The energy and creativity start to shut down.
You can deal with this in a couple of ways.

One way is to have the speaker at the start of the day.  This seems to work if
the topic the speaker is presenting will "kick off" the discussion and if, in
your opinion, it is vitally important for everyone to hear it.   We have used
this type of approach when our OS dealt with an upcoming change and we needed a
senior member of the organization to give background information on the
business background of the issue at hand.  If you use your speaker at the start
of the day the OS does not actually begin until speech is over.  We sometimes
do not even start in a circle if we have more than a 15 min speech but will
start in table or lecture format, have the structured session and then move to
the circle to physically indicate when the space is open.

Your second option is to invite the speaker to announce his topic during the
market place just like every other topic.  The speaker himself gets to choose
the time slot he would like and the participants can choose whether to attend
his session or not.  When you do this sometimes everyone will show up for the
speech, sometimes only a few will, but whatever happens happens in the true
spirit of open space.  This will only work if your sponsor is willing to let go
of control of mandatory attendance.  I have heard of conferences where several
speakers were booked prior to the planning group choosing OS as a methodology
who went this route.  The planners were a bit nervous at first but were very
pleased with the outcome.   Most of the speakers chose to stay for the entire
OS.

A third option would be to close the space with your closing circle and then
move to the speaker - this can be a problem because the energy of the OS is
quite high and then falls flat when the speaker starts, which can be very
discouraging for the speaker.

If you choose to have the speaker before closing the space you can still have
this effect - a huge energy drop when the mandatory session begins - which
impacts the feel of the whole event.

Finally you can decide to drop the speaker entirely - if the speech wouldn't
fit in your OS as a session then is it really relevant to the day?  Could it
happen another time and place.

I know these choices may not fit with your plans and only you will know what is
right for your group.

Have fun,  Sharon

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