OS in Kherson, Ukraine

[Jo Toepfer]

Dear colleagues,

I just came back from Kherson, where I had the opportunity to 
facilitate an open space meeting in the field of social service 
development. It happened that I worked together with Olena Mikitas 
and Svetlana Strelchuk. I found this opportunity very inspiring, we 
had high play and high learning and it was fun.

We practiced the "classical" design: half day / full day / half day 
(Action Planing). We had 84 participants, 24 issues posted at day 
one, 2 additional issues posted (in red) on day two, 22 reports 
handed in and 18 projects worked on in the Action Planing.

We worked in the 3rd floor of a huge youth palace, a gym. The 
renovation was just finished but far not over. Regardless to the 
intense cleaning the day before the event, the dirt of the renovation 
was all over the place. And in one corner we had a huge scaffolding. 
The whole atmosphere was very much in line with open space which can 
be seen as the construction sight of our lives.

Working with Olena and Svetlana was not only easy going and very 
relaxing for me as the facilitator. Both of them brought an special 
Ukrainian favour to the event that I could never have create on my 
own. The highlight was the Ukrainian - German facilitation duet 
during the Action Planing. Olena did the morning news, I did the 
Reading, Olena did the transition, I invited people to announce their 
projects, Olena introduced the planning session, I did the 
presentation and the closing circle. This division of labor had a 
huge amount of diversity: german - ukrainian, male - female, local - 
foreign, with glasses and without... It worked out very well and is 
maybe an important break through for the future.

The real kicker was the temperature. On day one and two we almost had 
40 degree. And the room had large windows and no air conditioner. 
Most of the people perceived this very calm. The good news is that 
the meeting room is just a few steps away from the river Dniepr. And 
we had a good time on the beach every evening. Actually, whenever 
somebody has to facilitate an open space in Kherson: this is a very 
good spot to do it.

take care
Jo

P.S.
When I came back from Kherson to Kyiv I met just by chance Lada a 
some of her friends. All of us were looking for a dining place. It 
happened that we decided to stay together and it was a marvelous 
evening in a little outdoor restaurant downtown in Kyiv. Perfect 
timing without any kind of planing :-) open space?







Jo Toepfer, boscop eg
Dolziger Str. 40, 10247 Berlin
++49-30-42018000
www.boscop.de  www.joconsult.de  

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