OST as a conference track

Koos de Heer koosdhr at auryn.nl
Tue May 7 02:42:42 PDT 2002


Hi Peggy and all,

At 09:02 6-5-2002 -0700, Peggy Holman wrote:
>I'm doing an Open Space in a few weeks that has a few twists (don't they
>all?) and would appreciate your thoughts.
>
>The setting is a 4-day conference of Computer Professionals for Social
>Responsibility.  The Open Space is on the last 2 days.  The first twist is
>that the OST event isn't for the whole conference.  It is a track of the
>conference on a particular topic  (Building a Pattern Language of Living
>Communication).  It won't be closed in any way; anyone can come and
>go.  It does have it's own space and will run on it's own schedule.  It's
>just that other conference sessions will be happening around it.
>
>First question -- has anyone done this?  Any advice?

I haven't done this, but a question comes to mind that I think should not
go unasked. What is the reasoning behind this? Why do OST for just a part
of the conference? Maybe I am too rigid in saying this, but in my opinion
you either believe in OST or you don't. So you would either hold the entire
conference in Open Space or not at all. Of course there are places and
times where OST is not the right tool, but in this case I can't see why the
entire conference couldn't be in Open Space. Trying OST just for
demonstration purposes usually does not work very well. So before I would
go along with a request like this I would really look into the reasons
behind the request and decide if those reasons are acceptable to me. And my
suggestion would be to do it well or not at all.

>The second twist is that the closing circle is envisioned as the
>conference closing.  This means that it will include not just the people
>who have been in the OST event but everyone who attended the
>conference.  Again, anyone have experience with something like this?

Same question here. If you think the closing of an OST meeting is
beneficial to everyone, then why not let them have the opening as well?

Best wishes from crisp, bright and sunny springtime Holland


Koos de Heer
Auryn management advies BV
Utrecht, the Netherlands
mailto:koosdhr at auryn.nl
http://www.auryn.nl/
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