Last minute (gulp!) help...midnight check in

[Birgitt Williams]

Dear Blake,
First-what are you doing awake at this hour if you are facilitating tomorrow
:) Best thing you can do is take care of you.

Okay, okay, easier said than done, sometimes.

About convergence. Keep it simple. What you had originally planned sounds
fine. And if people want to work on more than one item, they can  give their
name to the convenor of the other items saying they want to be included.
Don't forget, the action planning usually is about immediate next steps and
there will be more opportunities to get involved.

It is dangerous to ask questions about convergence/action planning on this
list. You are likely to get 30 totally different suggestions from 30
different people (or 50 suggestions from 10 people). We all like to give
advice. So---go with what you had figured to go with, and trust that all
will go well, and just as it should.

I hold you in the light through your facilitation. Trust.
Birgitt


-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]On Behalf Of Blake Mills
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 9:39 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Last minute (gulp!) help...midnight check in

To all of you who are awake late night Eastern Standard Time in the US and
around the world,  I would like your thoughts....or maybe just some
reassurance.

I am opening space tomorrow morning (1/10) for 130 high tech, in-your-face,
fast-paced, serious and wild, very smart people.  It is 1 and 1/2 days.
Their
theme is "How do we make our goals happen this year in our virtual
workplace?"  I was all set with the convergence activity until I spoke with
the sponsor tonight and I think I caught his anxiety.  Now I am second
quessing at the last minute.  That is where you come in...you who are awake
and willing.

How would you converge 130 people who don't want to prioritize and hate
touchy-feeling stuff?

Here's what I planned given the sponsoring managers did not want to
prioritize the topics at the end.  They felt the work would get done by the
passionate and responsible people anyway which was what happened with their
very successful smaller OS last year.

I have them post the "breaking news" all during the day.  On the converging
morning I am having them "walk the wall" of topics to review, add comments,
note links to other topics, etc. for about an hour.  Then I would have them
meet with the conveners on the topic that they felt passionate about and
that
they wanted to work on.  In that meeting they would decide the very next
action step.  (about an hour)
Then the closing circle (brief) for 45 minutes.

That was my plan.  However, after thinking about it with the
sponsor...people
are going/t to want to meet about 2, 3 or 4 topics.  How to do that all at
once?  Maybe split the estimated 25 to 35 topics in half and have 1/2 hour
for each section of topics?  I hope you can understand all of this.

Maybe I just do Nuran's...."you all converge...go to it!"

Back to making the matrix.

Thanks for any help!
Blake

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