Brief demonstrations

Peggy S. Holman peggy at opencirclecompany.com
Tue Aug 3 15:57:03 PDT 2004


Ralph -- I had a really different experience with 90 minutes.  I'm guessing
that it was because the topic was real (not just a demo).

It was the keynote for the Bowling Green MSOD Alumni conference.  They
wanted the 150 or so participants to experience Open Space.  After my first
thought of "impossible", I thought, "why not?"

It worked incredibly well!  I was amazed at the energy of the group and that
they really did move from topic to topic.  It was like watching a speeded up
video of an OS.  For the closing circle, I invited people to reflect using a
word or phrase.  This actually left time in the closing for Q&A on OST.

Mind you, I did this for graduates of an OD program who were as interested
in the form as they were the content of the gathering.

My take on it was that it would be impossible to do any subject justice in
90 minutes.  Given that,
rather than set the expectation of even one quality conversation, use the
time for another purpose: to invite people to notice who else has passion
for the same topics as you.  20 minutes to open, three 15 minute sessions,
20 minutes to close about does it.  In that time, people will find out the
range of subjects of interest and who else cares about them.  They'll be
able to touch in with the folks they meet after the OS.  And another
benefist
is that it leaves participants with a very different embodied experience of
what OST is.


Joe -- to your second question - OS at a conference.  I have also done this.
It was a conference track that ran in parallel with other more traditinal
sessions for the last 2 days of a three day conference.  Some people stayed
for the whole OS, others floated in and out.  They loved it.

home in Seattle at last,
Peggy

(Sorry for my extended silence.  Some of you know that I lost my mother to
cancer in March.  After being more and more focused on her during the
beginning of the year, I then set out for work in three unlikely places: an
OST facilitator workshop for a corporation in Basel, Switzerland, an
Appreciative Inquiry workshop in Ramallah and in Tel Aviv and an AI Summit
with the Israeli Ministry of Education (thanks to the invitation from Avner;
and the delight of working with both Avner and Tova), and a 4-day course on
Whole Systems Change in Bogota, Colombia.  I've followed the list
throughout, usually in 150-250 messages at a time chunks.  But the time and
mental capacity to write has been elusive.)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Copleman" <rcopleman at comcast.net>
To: <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 6:41 AM
Subject: [OSLIST] Brief demonstrations


> Joe Bowers, Harrison and all,
>
> I agree that doing an OS demonstration is challenging.  I did a 90-minute
> version once for a group of colleagues.  Had three 20-minute sessions
> squeezed in.  It was awful.  Everybody looked bored.  Never again.
>
> On the other hand, I did a 30-minute thing for a client once involving the
> top 20 managers in an American airline company.  They kept pressing me for
> an explanation, so during a break I hurriedly made the posters and stuck
> them on the walls.  Then I reconvened everyone in a circle and did the
> opening.  That's all.  No postings.  No actual open space.
>
> They loved it.  A month later I was doing a one-day event for them to
> explore their frequent-flier program, customers included.
>
> Ralph Copleman
>
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