Open Space in a conference

[Doris Gottlieb]

Dear List,

The other day I spoke with a prospective client who very much wants to
organize Open Space and, very exciting for me, he wants me to facilitate.
The thing is, this would be my first large Open Space and his description of
what he wants leaves me with some questions in my mind that I could really
use some advice on:

The background is that he is on the organizing committee for a European
Conference on Quality Management. The conference itself is organized into 8
different interest areas.  He is responsible for the organization of 1 of
the interest areas (Education and Quality).  Each interest area arranges the
conference as they see fit and in the past this has usually meant that
people present papers as lectures with short discussion groups after the
lectures.  In other words, quite traditionally.  He wants to change this in
his section, but in the rest of the conference he has no influence. People
have been traditionally free to roam through and sit in on sessions in each
interest area, but we have the option to say that people would have to
participate for the whole time, (although this is completely new to this 47
year old organization).

Anyhow, as I see it now, I have some questions:
Have other people ever facilitated Open Space Meetings within the context of
larger conferences where not everything was in Open Space (He said that
there are usually about 800 people at this conference as a whole, and he
thought about 100 could be expected for his interest area – Am I crazy to do
this as a first large OST event.) ? Should I do it at all? Do people have
suggestions, can you let me know what the dangers are of doing something
like this and what could be good ways to construct this?

Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,

Doris Gottlieb


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