convergence (again)

[Lisa Heft]

Julie,

How wonderful that you are part of all this transformation!

You wrote:
Our three local mayors are holding a Youth Forum from
8:30 - 1:30 next Friday.  Their goal is to learn what community issues
are most important to youth and to weave those concerns into the
community's comprehensive plan.  The core issue for the
mayors is to learn how our community could become a place more young
people would want to live in into their adulthood.  They would like the
event to end with a prioritizing of the top 10 concerns youth have about
our community.

- - -

I think it is possible to find top issues - the hidden element here is
that from what I understand this OST and the people in it are acting as
an advisory unit rather than being able to take the personal
responsibility of seeing it through / doing the work.

So in my experience you'd want to be crystal clear throughout with both
the participants (and that would include holding space for their
possible frustration that someone might step on or squish or not use
what comes out of the OS or even just that it is fabulous what they've
done and now they have to give it away) and the Mayors+planning
committee.  Careful work pre-event, and lots of it, could be done on the
what-comes-after design and planning.  Other ways to use this
information, to leverage the momentum and activity that comes of it, to
make sure that the 'outcome' is not just ten items but things other
people can do about it, to not just use youth as a voice but as
colleagues, etcetera.  Pre-event set up the framework for an action
newsletter, the next meeting dates, an agreement to hold OSs on each top
issue for further work on it, understanding of what
infrastructure/support you can let participants know about (matching
grants? Skillsbuilding workshops?) to help them do the same work
wherever they are as partners.

So in this 8:30-1:30 time, you're indeed getting a snapshot of
opportunities and issues raised by the group.  And it all depends also
on how you word your theme, too.  So it would also be good to think
exactly what is it, here, we shall vote for?

(by the way one of the most common ways is to give people 5 sticky-dots,
put up the minutes from the meeting on the wall (while they have
lunch?), give them some gallery/walk-around time so they can get an idea
of what's been brought up, and then ask them to walk to the wall to vote
by placing their sticky-dots)

The ten most important things...and here it begs the question: why come
up with 10 concerns?  Why that many, and why that few?  And can the vote
be slightly different - 10 things that can be done without additional
funding? 10 things that can be done within a year?  How could anybody
know this?  Is there a way to refine the 'ask' for the vote that helps
the constituents reasonably narrow it down from their own personal
passion issues to those that are...____ (fill in the blank)??

Heck, if you just wanted to find out top issues, you could ask folks to
each write down one word on a card (or whatever - their number one
issue) and walk up to the wall and place it there in a big mosaic, and
you'd have your snapshot, and your issues.  And you'd see your
patterns/clustering, too.

So what r-e-a-l-l-y could you do in this Open Space???  The
possibilities widen...

Lisa

L i s a   H e f t
Consultant, facilitator, educator
O p e n i n g  S p a c e
2325 Oregon
Berkeley, California
94705-1106   USA
(+01) 510 548-8449
lisaheft at pacbell.net
www.openspaceworld.com

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