Unforeseen problem of scale

John Moore jmoore at netspace.net.au
Fri Feb 21 14:45:56 PST 2003


Thanks to friends on the list who replied - we did the gig yesterday
and it went really well. Thanks Harrison and Eddie for suggesting teat
we just do it as one whole group.

Of course that is the only way to tackle an OS session. But with only
two and a half hours and a large number of people we started to panic!

We need not have worried. Only 150 turned up - it was the ned of a
conference and Friday afternoon. we were told that in previous years
the last session of the conference has been attended by much smaller
numbers and most of them disappeared during the afternoon.

We set up concentric circles, used a data projector to display the
principles and other introductory slides. We had access to a visualiser
(an electronic epidiascope) that allows you to put written material up
on the same screens as the dataprojector. This was useful in setting
the agenda because people could nominate form their seats and we could
write topics up. we thought we would be short of time in this part of
the session, so picked some brains beforehand to get some 'seeder'
topics. We needn't have bothered. It was all there and the technology
was really helpful.

The amount of movement during the 45 minute discussion session was
enormous. People seemed to range over a large number of groups and
sometimes a topic was left unattended for several minutes and then
another group formed at that station.

When people reconvened we discovered that there were still 95 people in
the room. We felt pretty good about that.

during the reports from groups - facilitated by the visualiser - we had
previously asked each group to come up with 3 key points they wanted to
get across.

With radio mikes, the visualiser and good volunteering the reports went
well. after about 25 minutes convergence began all on its own. We
pointed this feature of OS out to the community and immediately that
opened the convergence floodgate. It was like people had been dutifully
waiting for the reports to be finished before getting into the meaning
of things.

We learned many things from this experience - most of which are self
evident form the brief description above.

Above all we learned that doing OS in about 2 hours for about 150
people is not only possible but very exciting and rewarding for those
taking part. there were about 20 group repots and the amount of
material they produced in 45 minutes was prodigious.

John Moore

Open Futures Pty Ltd
PO Box 123 Cockatoo
Victoria 3781 Australia
ph:  +61 3 5968 8457
fx:   +61 3 5968 9925
mob: 0412 702 652

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