Key Personalities

[Diana Larsen]

Thanks, Melinda! I look forward to the reports. :-)

Diana

Diana Larsen
www.futureworksconsulting.com
503-288-3550

Watch for:
"Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great" by Esther Derby &  
Diana Larsen, available Summer 2006! Published by Pragmatic Bookshelf  
(new title!)
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/dlret/index.html




On Jun 29, 2006, at 11:04 AM, Melinda Salazar wrote:

> Dear Diana,
> Ah, a very familiar scenerio and one in which we, two teachers who  
> collaborate on an annual Teaching Peace conference for educators,  
> parents, and community folk, struggled with this year.  Our first  
> conference offered the un-Open Space/traditional conference format  
> with compelling keynotes (published, renowned academics) and a 5  
> strand breakout workshops, also presented by academics, educators  
> and community members.  We provided a conference line-up not to be  
> missed (tee-shirts and all!). We drew a little over one hundred  
> participants, including students, teachers and community activists,  
> as well as the (left-leaning) filmmakers who used the ocnference to  
> 'get up-close and personal' with  anti-war scholars.
>
> After experiencing Open Space at a Baha'i environmental conference  
> with Steve Cochran (US Partnership of the UN Decade for Education  
> for Sustainable Development), I convinced my conference  
> collaborator to try Open Space the following year.  Long story  
> short, the OS conference was equally successful with a smaller  
> attendance due to, we believe, a challenging date vs. conference  
> format.  The biggest difference between the two conferences was: 1)  
> no matter what we did, we could NOT get the academics to attend,  
> which is interesting in an of itself in terms of our (I also wear  
> an academic hat) retention and promotion conference activity as  
> well as a gap of OS in higher ed settings, and 2) attracting  
> participants without the 'line-up.'
>
> We tried a version of your proposed plan, which I've come to learn  
> from this list as a functional transitional strategy. We invited  
> key individuals to host an OS session and had to work hard to  
> convey OS concepts to these individuals over and over: you are not  
> presenting a paper, or facilitating a workshop, rather you are kick  
> starting a conversation about.....  This approach was successful  
> for some and not for others. We did provide a Marketplace space  
> where these selected indivuals, as well as others, could set up a  
> table, etc. and worked Marketplace time into the conference.
>
> Can you read more about our OS Teaching Peace conference on our  
> website? Not yet!  Have I done anything with the OS reports? Not  
> yet!  Hopefully, over the summer.....so I appreciate this  
> opportunity to revisit our 1st OS conference.
>
> Warmly,
> Melinda
>
>
> Melinda Salazar, Ph.D
> University of New Hampshire
> Women's Studies
> Oyster River High School
> Social Studies Department
> 603.682.4525
>
>
>
> Quoting Diana Larsen <dlarsen at futureworksconsulting.com>:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I'm working with two or three conference planning groups who want  
>> to  hold conferences completely in Open Space next year. They all  
>> have a  little concern about whether they can attract the kind of   
>> participation they'd like without well-known KeyNote or Invited   
>> Speakers - the folks whose presence justifies the participants'   
>> attendance to bosses, etc.
>>
>> One planning group came up with the idea of inviting Key   
>> Personalities and offering them honoraria and help with travel   
>> expenses as if it were a regular conference - but asking them / 
>> not/  to give keynote speeches. Their names would be included on  
>> the  invitations to others as having committed to attend, possibly  
>> along  with some topics they consider proposing for the marketplace.
>>
>> Has anyone tried this before? What do you all think about  
>> inviting  "key personalities" to an Open Space conference? Has  
>> anyone done  this? What benefits/pitfalls do you see, did you  
>> experience? I have  mixed thoughts and emotions, and would like  
>> some further data to  offer the planning groups. What effect on  
>> "Whoever comes are the  right people" happens when some folks  
>> receive compensation for  attendance and others don't?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Diana
>>
>>
>> Diana Larsen
>> www.futureworksconsulting.com
>> 503-288-3550
>>
>> Watch for:
>> "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great" by Esther Derby &   
>> Diana Larsen, available Summer 2006! Published by Pragmatic  
>> Bookshelf  (new title!)
>> http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/dlret/index.html
>>
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