AW: 2108 -- Remember the Number

Thu Jun 12 13:51:43 PDT 2003

At 08:01 PM 6/12/2003 +0200, you wrote:

>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?

I really failed to see any difference in the coping capacity with the group 
of 2000 and any other group I have ever worked with.

>  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.

It is worse than that -- It is impossible. Which is why I never try. I do 
sense the flow of energy, but in terms of being clear about what is going 
on (especially in detail) -- no way -- especially when it is all in German. 
Just gives me a bad headache.

>  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?

I don't think it has too much to do with being comfortable or 
uncomfortable, and certainly I feel no particular obligation to set them at 
ease. As a matter of fact, acute discomfort is often the (essential) 
precursor to genuine learning. But I wouldn't try to make them 
uncomfortable either. In fact, I wouldn't try to MAKE them anything at all. 
My objective is only to enable an environment in which people can be fully 
themselves (or at least as fully as they care/dare to be). As for 
self-organization, that "worked" I believe, because all of life is 
self-organizing. True there are some folks who think they did the 
organizing, but on a charitable day, I would call them deluded. We can 
assist the process. We can detract from the process. But I don't think we 
can change the process, and certainly we did not create the process. For me 
the process of Open Space is the process of life, is the process of 
self-organization. All one thing.

>  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?

One basic truth in our world is that everything has a beginning, middle and 
end. For us it is called birth, life, and death. This is true for each one 
of us, and all of us together. One way or another, sometime or other, there 
will arise a set of circumstances which overwhelm our capacity to cope. But 
the strange thing is (at least to me) that we have gotten along as well as 
we have -- and in fact are still here on planet Earth complaining about how 
bad things have gotten. So yes, there are limits. There are limits to 
everything. But I don't think we have even come close to finding out what 
they are -- in Open Space, or in the great ball game of Life.

Harrison

>

>
>
>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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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 http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm

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