SV: OS-meeting with Nordic politicians

[Lise Damkjær]

Dear Thomas,

GREAT WORK!
It's very positive to read your story. I also expected that politicians
would enjoy the dialogue in open space, but it is nice to have it confirmed.
And I love the question about the braveness!

Thanks!

Lise, Copenhagen

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] På vegne af Thomas
Herrmann
Sendt: 21. maj 2006 23:19
Til: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Emne: OS-meeting with Nordic politicians

Dear friends in Open Space
I promised to share some about last weeks OS-meeting where 160 local and
regional leading politicians from the Nordic countries participated(Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland). The OS-meeting lasted from lunch to
lunch at the end of 2,5 days conference. The first day was excursions in the
region and then there were some welcome speeches and seminars.

OST was new ground to most of them and they seemed to enjoy it a lot -
adapting the law of two feet like a very advanced group - the group size
shifter between 160-40-80-120 (opening, evening news, morning news,
closing). The sponsors were pretty cool understanding that whatever the
participants wished to do had been done during the OS-meeting. Evening news
day one was very intimate, I invited those who were there to form a smaller
circle in the center - which was very nice.

The theme was: Issues and opportunities for brave (political)leadership
which was in line with the theme for the whole conference. 28 issues were
raised and 27 were reported upon. The main purpose of the meeting was to
exchange experiences and learn from each other, but at the end we organized
a simpel voting procedure to see which topics were most important to the
group/for political leadership. I had written all topics on my computer,
printed so each had a copy and could use five votes to show his/her
preferences. The top issue was: How can we get good and constructive
dialogue with citizens about difficult decisions that have to be made?
Number 2-3 were about how to improve the internal work/collaboration.

There was also an opportunity to write up initiatives for topics that
someone wanted to move forward. Five issues were raised and some signed up
to join. Everything was photographed since reports were written on
flip-charts.

One thing I think is good in situations like this is to integrate/keep
everything in Open Space, so the sponsors used the talking stick to tell
practicalities at morning/evening news and the closing of the OS-meeting was
the closing of the conference which worked fine - apart from that the
"speech" at the end got a bit squeezed - as the group used some of this
time. At morning news we had suziki-kids playing violin and singing in the
circle - beautiful.

Some comments I heard about OST were that it was great to be able to have
dialogue instead of discussions/debates which they usually have. And then
the regulair ones about raising your own issues and so on. Several talked
about using OST in their region in the future.

We had a challenge as some participants didn´t understand each other - the
Finnish language is very different from Swedish, Norwegian and Danish (who
understand each other) - so there were possibilities to use headphones for
those who did not understand "Scandinavian". Also we had one person with a
microphone in the circle who translated whatever was said in Finnish - that
worked well. The main tactic was that the group was to handle this situation
together in the work groups but we also had 5 persons who had volunteered to
help translating if help was wanted.

One funny story: The sponsors had been doing some thinking about how to get
media-coverage. When I arrived there were some TV-teams outside the hotel -
wow, I thought they managed well! But the teams were after another story -
at around midnight a beaver had checked into the hotel - he/she sneeked
though the entrance and finally ended up in one of the guest-rooms, from
which the police fetched him - big news all over Sweden. Knocked out by a
beaver!!
Warmest regards
Thomas Herrmann         Phone +46 (0)709-98 97 81
Open Space Consulting   Fax   +46 (0)300-713 89
Pensévägen 4
434 46 Kungsbacka, Sweden
Email: thomas at openspaceconsulting.com
www.openspaceconsulting.com

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