My first Open Space without coffee breaks and snacks (long)

[Sebastian Umlauft]

My first Open Space – without coffee breaks and snacks

Dear Listings,

Let me first express my gratitude for all the
contributions and suggestions that are made on
this  this inspiring list. When in the midst
of preparing and organising my first Open Space
I thought of the special knowledge and passion
that was exchanged in this group.  Following the
tradition  I would like to share the  story about
my first own open space:

I travelled to Jericho in  Palestine to help
Susanne Triner from  the  “Together21” Project.
It was planned to hold an OSonOS  for who would
then be assisting our planned Open Space activities
in May 2007. You will find the invitation to the
events (“What on Earth can we do together
in 7 days?”) in this listing soon.  Due to Holy Days
in Israel the border police was nervous and did not
appreciate Susanne’s many visits to the country.
She was only allowed to stay one week.
When I arrived Susanne had left and I had to make
the decision whether I wanted to held my first
open space alone or cancel it. I decided to move on
and do my best in organising my first open space
workshop (not OSonOS as planned before)

After talking to Muslim friends we decided to offer
a 3 day work shop. The hours were given due to
Ramadan which is the holy month in Muslim tradition
where everybody is fasting from dawn to dusk: 

Friday 12 a.m. to 4  p.m. -- set up for open space 
Saturday  9 a.m. to 3 p.m.--  “Education for everyone
          and every age – how can we do this together?”
Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. --  Reading circle,
          Action Planning and Feedback

On Friday, most of the participants showed up more
than an  hour late.  Then they all worked on the
OS set up  with the Organising Set from Michael Pannwitz
(which we was translated from German to English and
into Arab). After 2,5 hours  the posters were done and
most of the work was  finished and  Due to Ramadan the
participants were loosing their energy  and had to leave
for their family dinner. I would have liked to do a
closing circle but that had to be cancelled.

On Saturday we could finally start at 10.30h. The
introduction and the opening went well.  20 participants
posted 14 topics.  Later we had some discussions because
of misunderstandings in the translation, but we solved
that. May be it was the missing buffet and the
non-available drinks that made people stay in their first
groups. They did not use the law of two feet. They worked
hard on 7 topics  and then the energy drained  quickly.
So we closed the workshop one hour ahead of time.

On Sunday we started  at 10.30h with 15 participants.
We just did the reading (of the posted topics) and had a
feedback round. It was agreed that we would want to
organise a follow-up day after the ending of Ramadan and
then include an  action planning of this event.

My personal reflections:
I was not at all prepared to organize, host and facilitate
a workshop. I made me jump into cold water. I wanted to
carefully avoid political discussions, so we selected a
neutral place. Calling for “neutral”
participants was also not easy.

A few days before the Open Space event I held a class at
the local university. This is why mainly students from the
university came. Unfortunately this limited the diversity
in the groups as they knew one another and influenced the
passion and creativity in the group.  

A teacher from the hosting school volunteered to translate
the workshop but quite often I felt that important
information was missing in the translation. It is certainly
not easy to facilitate a workshop when the facilitator does
not speak the language and in addition it is challenging
when the translator fills the missing words with his own
ideas.  I was also challenged in holding the place when one
of the participants thought he would support me by
throwing in jokes.

No Buffet-style OS during Ramadan. What is special about OS
when there is no great buffet, no coffee break and no snacks?
The event becomes 1.5 hour shorter when everybody is fasting.
After a certain time people start searching for a safe place
to relax or revitalize their body. If they do not succeed in
finding such an energy place, they may stay but look like
a cold unmoving stone. Also they influence those who are
still moving on, including the facilitator who is trying to
hold the space.

Can you imagine some kind of energy renewal during Ramadan?
What would be an equivalent to an OS buffet?
Does anybody have ideas? Experiences?

As Ramadan means also coming together with family and friends
in the evenings, I would suggest that Ramadan is a NO-OS-Time.

Creating energy and holding space may not last long – without
coffee breaks and snacks
.Coffee breaks really are the mystics
of open space.

We will go on in Jericho, and Susanne Triner will offer a real
OSonOS in January. In May we plan the event with the trained
OS-facilitator group. Fortunately some of the participants are
really into it and willing to move on. You will soon hear
about the Together21 plans in Jericho. 

Now I go for a coffee to continue working on my wiki page. HO :)

-- Sebastian Umlauft
-- Germany

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist