A strange open space...

[Harrison Owen]

At 06:42 PM 9/28/2002 -0400, glory wrote:
>Here's the strange part - only about 30 people attended (the sponsor
>expected more, not less, people) and they generated only 3 topics. Many
>were busily going over the Book of Proceedings from Meeting 1. As they
>broke for their discussion, I invited them to post other topics
>throughout the course of the meeting. The Heritage slide 'presentation'
>took over - with the sponsor pushing for open discussion, which did
>eventually take place. It was everything I could do not to get in
>there... The report generated was quite specific with regard to
>community plans. The closing circle comments were of the same sort along
>with some 'we didn't need another OS meeting' and some 'I'm glad we had
>another OS meeting'. The energy was very muted.
>
>Here's my question - what are your thoughts on my 'allowing' the
>'presentation' and the presence of my students? I have been pondering
>whether these factors somehow inhibited the space... What might you have
>done differently?

I would agree with Michael P. Presentations, while not my favorite mode,
don't seem to make much difference provided they are offered as a session
with The Law of Two Feet fully operative. It may well have been your
students. with a small group (30) they constituted just  about 25%. And if
they were in an "Observer" mode -- that could be a downer. Last winter i
was involved in what I can only call The Open Space from Hell. Everybody
was yelling at the facilitator (not me) about why nothing was happening.
Actually a lot was, but not quite what we had hoped for. This OS had been
convened to figure out what to do with a $6 billion Federal program. Lot of
money / high stakes, etc Turned out that in the group of 60 people, better
than 50% were feds who had been instructed by their leadership "just to
observe." All the rest of the people were participants in the program, and
of course, the Feds paid the bills and made the rules. Well it didn't take
a rocket scientist to figure out that when the dominant group (numbers wise
also is the major power player) just sit there and LOOK -- things could
become a little quiet. Actually the amazing thing was that even though all
this was true, many of the non-feds really loved OS, and wanted more --
which they got.

This of course is an extreme case, but it might be suggestive. Or more
likely, folks did just what they needed to, and that just didn't match your
expectations. (smile)

ho

>Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-365-2093
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website www.mindspring.com\~owenhh

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