The Art and Craft of Teaching Peace in OS

[Lisa Heft]

Hello, Melinda -

 

How exciting to hear of your April 1 Teaching Peace conference.  Are you
using both Open Space and World Café on one day?  

 

You asked:

1.  How do we market the conference to a public who generally does not 

know who OS is and who might be looking for the big name/keynote 

speaker and workshop leaders? That is, a traditional conference would 

list speakers and workshops to draw participants.  Last year, we 

offered 5 workshop tracks.  Since we don't know who is coming yet this 

year, how can we advertise the conference? Should we plant some 

conveners in our participant group who have offered sessions at the 

previous conference?

 

You can always invite some amazing people and list them as 'invited guests
include...'  Of course you'll want to inform them of the process and that
they are invited to participate in any way they wish, hosting sessions or
not as they feel they will best contribute and share learning.  (what I am
saying is don’t ask them to host a session – they’ll know what they’ll feel
like doing as the process unfolds and they may – on the other hand they may
share and learn much more by attending other peoples’ sessions, as everyone
will be the ‘expert’ in Open Space).  And you'll want to give them a very
good sense that this is more a series of conversations, not a presentation,
and that people will be coming in and out and sampling different
conversations. 

 

If you need an article describing the process for them you can use mine if
you like:

"Opening Space for Collaboration and Communication" at

http://www.openingspace.net/papers_facilitation_OSCollaborationCommunication
.shtml

 

And you can advertise the conference with enthusiasm, based on what sorts of
people you know will be coming (peacemakers, educators, policy makers,
thought leaders – however you want to describe the mix of people who come to
this conference already).

Here are some invitations that may spark some ideas:

http://www.openingspace.net/openSpaceTechnology_method_resources_invitations
5.shtml

 

And you can mention the method or not; if you do, you can say ‘experience a
process used in peace conferences around the world’ because it is.

 

The key is to craft something so exciting that people will feel like they
don’t want to miss it!   And you may want to send out different approaches
to reach different kinds of people – different cultures (educators, young
people, peace builders, business leaders, faith communities) may respond to
different languaging, graphics, and so on.

 

They key is to invite
and invite
and keep inviting all the way up until your
event.  To get creative, and outreach, and see who else is not yet coming,
and who with a very different viewpoint needs to be there.

 

2.  How do we get those "experts" to attend and to see themselves as 

participants who both have something to offer and gain from the 

experience?

 

You’d be amazed at how excited ‘experts’ are when they get to really engage,
when they get to try a new approach, when they are invited, when they can
talk about what they are really passionate about.  The right ones will
always come, and love it.

 

And what an amazing conference it will be
and such an experience of peace –
rather than talking about it, people will be *being* peace


 

Lisa

 

___________________________

L i s a   H e f t

Consultant, Facilitator, Educator

O p e n i n g  S p a c e

Berkeley, California, USA

lisaheft at openingspace.net

www.openingspace.net 

 

 

 


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