What are the unstated assumptions and aims of OS?

Joelle Lyons Everett JLEShelton at aol.com
Sun Oct 13 22:21:06 PDT 2002


In a message dated 10/13/02 7:57:44 PM, 76066.515 at COMPUSERVE.COM writes:

<< But I am resistant on the idea of saying yes to having the people at the

first night set the agenda, or sub-themes, for the remaining three

sessions. Then again I can see how it might work, how people might focus on

particular aspects, and how those sub-themes might lead to more topics

being posted....


Or perhaps I can ask the people at that session if that is what they want

to do.


Can you help me with my confusion? <grin>

 >>

Doug--

You might explain that in the experience of many facilitators, an OS
conference is far more powerful when participants develop their own session
themes; that the usual practice is for the sponsoring group to determine the
overall theme and for the sub-themes to be developed within the meeting by
the participants.

Then have them focus on the overall theme for the first meeting, and include
the concerns which surface in the first meeting in developing the overall
theme for the following meetings.

I suspect that the "emergent" quality of an Open Space meeting is a new idea
to most doctors, who rely on research to test new ideas.  But maybe you can
find some analogies from the field of medicine that they could relate to.
One that comes to my mind is "exploratory surgery," where neither the cause
of the symptoms nor the remedy which will be required is known until the
doctor goes in and discovers what is there.

One of the common difficulties in health care is the assumption of some
doctors that they know everything.  But since they have hired you to
facilitate this meeting, I think that you can assume that part of your job is
to educate them about "best practices" in your field of expertise.

Joelle

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html



More information about the OSList mailing list