OS of 2108 -- I was there

[Birgitt Williams]

Erich,
thank you for capturing the photostory and for your willingness to share it.
And thank you and Gabi for raising important questions so that we can all
really learn from this experience that Harrison and Michael went for. In an
event like this, I think the biggest risk and the possible biggest benefit
was to the facilitators of OST who are in Germany. If the ongoing story is
one of appreciation of OST, there will be a large increased use of OST. If
the ongoing story is one from people who felt alone/bored and so on, that
too, with such a large number of witnesses, will be the story to be
contended with. Time will tell.

Blessings,
Birgitt
  -----Original Message-----
  From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]On Behalf Of Erich
Kolenaty
  Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 5:48 AM
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
  Subject: OS of 2108 -- I was there



  Yes, I was there!!

  It was a great event and an exciting experience. And it does work!

  I made a lot of photographs to document the historical moment. I will look
it through next days and create a photostory in a powerpointfile or so.
Everybody who likes may download it from my homepage. I will announce it to
you all, when it's ready.

  It is only a pity, that a camera can hardly catch the impression of the
masses in the huge tent: around 2.700m² of space and the people sitting on
cushions round the middle. It looked like at a tennis center court. (And
there was a second, smaller tent nearby, for the catering supply and some of
the working groups.)


  Now it is over and time for reflection and further learning is coming:

  It is great, that we proved, that it works with really a crowd. Actually
it was a simple OS application - finishing day in a 4-days congress. But to
be true, there are a lot of questions uprising to be answered.

  And all questions come along with the complexity, which is created by the
huge number of people

  Here are some of them:

  * There was no need for a marketplace with real dealing. Imagine a
bulletin line with 230 topics on, of approximately 200m lenght in three
sections (one for each working session) along three walls. Quiet a work only
to walk it up. It' s ok, if you are only looking for a nice party to talk,
but if you want to overview a lot of topics of serious meaning for the
system, it is not that easy. And how to make deals within this distances?

  * Mass psychology and time structure: At one hand people need more time to
keep orientated what's going - and doing all the marches (Hard work for
bumblebees). This means, you need some extratime between the timeslots of
the working sessions. At the other hand someone can feel damned lonesome, if
your are lost in a crowd of 2000 and there is nothing really going on. At
the end of a congress people may avoid unpleasuring feelings simple by
leaving (and many dropped off).
  I don't have any ideas how to handle that at the moment, but may be it is
not a problem at all.

  * Reports: Michaels way of giving out report sheets for handwriting on a
clipboard to every group worked very well. But if you want to support 60
people each working session to write reports in an IT-system, you need a lot
of technical stuff. And it needs a lot of reading time, too.

  * Visualizing: There were no flipcharts (or pinboards). That was fine,
because you had an unlimited view from one end to the other. If you would
like to support peoples work to come to pleasuring outcomes, visualization
is very helpful. This probably means you need even more space and may be a
different concept of structuring the hall.

  * There was no need for a convergence. Folks conveined to topics of there
passions (and some of them where really strange) and everybody participating
in a session, picked out experiences for his own individual benefit. But how
to converge 180 reports in a appropriate way? Maybe we need adapted
structuring ideas for procedures. Not to mention the masses of paper to copy
the book (round 400.000 sheets). The electronic voting system helps a lot,
anyway you need a huge technical supply.


  It was a great event and at the same time it opens up an enormous field of
new learnings and experiences needed. Let's do it..

  Erich from lovely Vienna










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