AW: 2108 -- Remember the Number

[Erich Kolenaty]

Hi Birgitt, Harrison und Michael,



I want to share some reflections I wrote these days, which are very close to
your questions and add maybe 2 Eurocents more.



The Würzburg OS day proved what he had to: OS works with 2100 people. At
least if you reduce the carriage of your march. It proved that it is of
value to use OS at congresses and may enrich them a lot: Congresses have a
tendency to play to much music from the frontside anyway.



But if you use OS as a congress application you do not need to use some of
the core elements of an OST meeting. Therefore and though the experience in
Würzburg was succsessful, new questions are uprising. How can in a meeting
of that size the core competence of OS  be achieved -to work together on
important topics or burning questions towards an implementation?



I want to apologize before I start: I am a very practical orientated man and
want to bring in some additions to the enthusiasm I read about the 2108 of
Würzburg



Selfcomplexity and selforganization



It seems to me that 500, 1000 or 2000 people are simple different social
aggregats (seen under the view of a participative approach). There are many
experiences working with 500 or so, but not too many with 1000 (I can only
remember one in Germany) and no experiences with 2000 so far. Open Space
roots in selforganization of praticipants in in a minimal structur. The key
question is  How large is the ability of people to come along with the
complexitiy that emerges in a crowd of 2000? To handle the sheer mass of
people, space and choices. (Remember: 150 meter walk to see all the topics).
My observation: many people found (their) workshops, but I also observed
many lost persons. To keep clear whats going on under these circumstances
can be a psychological and physical challenge. But I know chaos is part of
OS and however many people had good time, like the pictures showed. And
those, who felt uncomfortable found a way or simple left. Did
selforganization therfore work? We do not know, because there were no
exitpolls and there was no need to deliever any outcomes. 150 written report
sheets only proof:  if people find a meet a theme of very large broad and no
givens and they are stimulated in the right way, they are able to have a
good time. But if you think about work with the need of shared outcomes?
There might be limititations of complexity that raises up with the number of
people, where the work starts to be insufficient. Ecological systems usually
have a limit of growth where they break down immediately, if it is too much
of anything. Where is that limit and what kind of nutrient enviroment could
be helpful to support a really large group under this conditions?



Delivery and logistics



An OST.meeting in many cases is headed to delivery. This needs elements that
were missing in Würzhurg (there was no need for that). A really working
marketplace, the book, convergence and action planning. The practical carry
through of these procedures is in direct connection to the size of a
meeting.



1. Working sessions. I suppose the surprising huge number of workshops
emerged for two reasons: People where up on their own private passions. They
did not notice other ones with close contents and there was no need to. Just
walked in with their sheets. In a real working meeting people probably
attentive observe what's going on, to join in already convened workshops or
not to get into a competition of topics. This reduces the number of
workshops. And - if you work on a shared topic, there is probably a limited
number of topics that make sense - beyond the number of people there.What
does it mean? Let's say a meeting with 2000 people, 7 working sessions, 150
topics, (Harrisons bet). It's 21 workshops each session and nearly 100
people in every single session in the average. Hmm, I know that 100 people
can work together very well, but every group, at every time?



2. Marketplace: It is possible to concentrate 230 topics at a linge that is
smaller than 150 meter, for sure. I can hardly believe that it is possible
to overview the stuff, if there are thousands around you, but imagine the
crowd dealing! I believe more to individual arbitrariness than to
negotiations. This does not matter if your only interest is to find any
workshops where you can probably have a good time. But if you have high
interest because you have passion for the whole thing? Any ideas to handle
that?



3 Writing reports: Handwritten reports work beautiful at many occassions, as
I know. But my experience is, that the quality of typed reports is much
higher. People spend more time to think it over and to bring in a form that
is understandable for people, who did not share the workshop. And this makes
it easier to work on with it. To type in 230 reports made in, lets say 7
working sessions, makes something like 30 - 50 PCs, right? A technical
challenge, you need probably a technical tent too, but you can make it.



4. The book: To copy 150 reports, even of one page each, is 300.000 copies,
right? May be you need a print office, but can make it. But how much time
does the crowd need to read the book before convergence? 2 hours minimum?
Maybe a little dizzy after?



5. Convergence: There is no need for convergence in a congress. In an
OSTmeeting: The voting software is very helpful. May be the easiest part, if
you have a lot of terminals to enter the votes. But it will take some time
and you need to have some clever ideas to make the result visualized. It
would be very helpful to merge topics to reduce the number. I can only
hardly imagine how it works with 2000. Selforganization? Maybe.



6 Action planning: There is no use for the "Top 10" formula. It creates
groups of an average number of 200. "Top 30"? Still 65 each. Any experiences
of action planning groups of this size? Would an "action space", like the
Berlin guys do it, help (another little OS for building planning groups)?
Maybe no difference for the numbers. At last the same question as at the
first bullet: Is there a limit of working ability of groups by numbers and
if, where?





I can imagine that OS is a beautiful ingredient to a congress, by using some
strong elements of OS and dropping some others (being aware of this). But a
succesful application in a congress does not answer all questions we have,
doing an OS-meeting with 2000.



And there is one very hard disadvantage: In Würzburg 2000 people believed to
have learned to know what OS is really like, but they experienced only
pieces of all the huge possibilities, we know that OS can have. Good
marketing? Bad marketing? Who knows...



Erich

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