OST meeting about "Creating balance at work and in life"

[Thomas Herrmann]

Dear friends in Open Space
A while ago I facilitated an Open Space meeting with the above theme.
The idea grew out of a little network of people from public and non-profit
organizations. They have been meeting for some time to share and cooperate
to achieve better workplaces. Last year they arranged a more traditional
type of conference. Since then one of them has been to one of my OST
trainings and got interested in the method. So this time the idea was to
take advantage of all the knowledge of the participants. To give them an
opportunity to talk about these issues, share and learn together. Of course
we also marketed it as an opportunity to develop new networks among people
who care for these issues.

As I normally do, I facilitated a 4 hour preparation meeting where they
clarified the purpose, set the theme, worked out the logistics and planned
how to follow up. They were quite concerned to have enough participants not
to make a loss. It was a non-profit arrangement and most of the participants
came from their own organizations. So we made an agreement of a basic price
and a pro-participant cost.

Surprise surprise, about 200 people registered for the event!

We had two concentric circles in the huge room. All the 14 workgroups were
around the circles - even with space left. The room is 43*26 meters.

The opening speech was short and nice and I think the opening went fine. As
always the creation of the agenda had its own way. It went slowly but
steady - in total 26 topics were raised. Inital chaos at the agendawall and
off they were. And they talked and talked, laughed and worked very
intensively for the three timespaces of 1,5 hours each. Lunch was scheduled
before the final one.

We had a short gathering in the circle and then they had 45 minutes for
reading the reports, reflecting by themselves or in groups and having
coffee/the. When invited by the bells to gather again about half of the
participants had left, which was a pity, but whatever...

Some thoughts:
I´ve had a few experiences that a long day 8.30-16.30 may be a little too
much for some. What do you think? Especially when the theme is about balance
I guess people walk their talk;). Another experience is that when the
conference is in an organization this rarely happens. I also avoid Fridays.
I am also thinking about the cultural difference regarding taking intiatives
overtly. I think that we Swedes in general are quite careful to expose
ourselves and take the lead (we have this Jante-law which tells us that we
shouldn´t think that we are anything special!). On this occasion we gathered
in the circle after reading- and talkingtime, and there was an opportunity
to take initatives for future action. No one cared enough to raise an issue
to go on with after the conference. Which of course was OK.

The closing was powerful. They had had lots of inspiring conversations. One
comment was that they had experienced a day with great balance thanks to the
OS-structure.
Warmest regards to you all
Thomas Herrmann         Phone +46 (0)709-98 97 81
Open Space Consulting   Fax   +46 (0)300-713 89
Pensévägen 4
434 46 Kungsbacka, Sweden
Email: thomas at openspaceconsulting.com
www.openspaceconsulting.com

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