OS of 2108 -- I was there

[Harrison Owen]

At 11:48 AM 5/7/2003 +0200, Erich from lovely Vienna wrote:
>
>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?

the interest thing to me was that in spite of the distances involved --
deals were done. I noted a number of topics that were combined (several
sheets together in a single space). In addition, the original 236 issues
resulted in 150 reports. Some of this attrition was due, I am sure, to
people simply not writing reports. but that relates to passion (or lack of
same). It also relates to combinations of issues. I have no idea what the
ratio was between these two, but that both were present, I have no doubt.
To understand what happened, given the size of the group and the amount of
space to be covered, I can only appeal to what I know about self-organizing
systems. They are massively parallel (redundant) which in many ways zeros
out the effect of increased numbers of people and space involved. When
everything is happening all at once, it makes less difference how many
people and  how much space. On the other hand, with a linear (serial)
system -- the more people and space, the more time required.

>  * 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.

It is true that there were fewer people at the end (perhaps 1000 as opposed
to the original 2000). However, the drop in numbers was, if anything much
less than I have often experienced in 3-4 day conferences of a traditional
sort. My question would be, why did so many stay? It is very subjective to
be sure, but my sense was that the energy and spirit at the end was
certainly equal to, or better than, the beginning. As to why folks left, i
would guess that there were two major factors. 1) Planes to catch and
Trains to ride. 2) By the luck of the draw, many people found that the
sessions they wanted to attend happened in the first two periods, so there
was less incentive to stick around. Doubtless there were a few malcontents
for whom Open Space is not their cup of tea. That always happens, and I am
not sure there is too much to be done about it.  Such people also seem to
expect that somebody is going to tell them what to do and will complain
when that does not happen. Fortunately for them, there always seem to be a
number of "experts" who are willing to do the "telling," but speaking
strictly for myself, I find that living my life by other people's rules
puts a real kink in my passion -- and for sure absolves me of whatever
responsibility I might have.

>  * 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.

A little help from IT would be good. But wen working with slightly smaller
groups (1000-1500) I found the necessary support quite easy to provide. The
major difficulty I have found is that the IT folks work too hard, and
produce a system that is too complicated. There is a wonderful story of an
Open Space for 1200 Microsoft folks -- OS worked as usual, but the whole IT
system went down. Apparently it was a monster of interconnectedness, and
when one part failed, the whole thing cascaded to an inglorious end. I have
never had anything like that happen, but then again I always look for the
simplest way.

>  * 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.

My experience -- prioritization and convergence with a group this size and
150 reports is not much of a problem. It does require time (as in at least
a day and a half, and preferably two). And for sure computer based
"balloting" is essential. In a word Sticky-dots won't do it.
Needless-to-say, I have never worked with 2000 before, but I have worked a
number of times with groups close to 1000 and a similar number of issues.
No problem.

>  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..

I say YES to that!

Harrison

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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