OS session at Quebec Social Forum

Thu Aug 30 04:06:35 PDT 2007

Esther -- Well done! And in a most difficult situation. Gatherings such as
you describe makes me realize once again just how flexible Open Space can
be. If you were to draw up a list of all the things you would not want when
doing an Open Space, I think you pretty well met them all. And yet as you
say, it worked.

As I re-read what I just wrote, I think I might want to re-state: Something
about how flexible people are and can be when given even just a little space
to move around in. And that is exactly what you did so well.

Harrison

-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of
Communications Esther Matte
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 4:45 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: OS session at Quebec Social Forum

Hello all,

Well, I facilitated my OS session at Quebec 
Social Forum last weekend, with the help of two 
colleagues from Gatineau, Isabelle N. Miron and Odette Levac. It was great!

Of course, conditions were less than ideal. Our 
session was slated at the end of the worshops 
program, but still concurrent to 75 other very 
interesting sessions. I did advertize it the day 
before by becoming a "sandwich woman", wearing 
front and back signs announcing my event. It said 
the title, and then "No speakers, no panelists... 
only YOUR ideas". It made people curious and I'm 
sure brought a few to the session. Thanks 
Fabulous Lisa for the idea of marketing my 
session with cards or sign during the whole event!

I had quite a few surprises, one of which was 
that we could only access the room one hour 
before the start of the session. So I needed a 
theme banner that was quick to install, and light 
for transport. What I did was a clothesline, with 
colour cardboard. One colour per word. It was 
superb, very lively and so easy to install!

About 30 people came at the start, of which about 
25 applied the Law of 2 feet after the first 
round of discussion. Then, about 10 people came 
in one after the other, to whom we explained how 
we created the agenda, the Law and the 
Principles, inviting them to post topics and hold 
discussions. Which they did! One even posted two 
topics and did both discussions in the hour left. 
So, as always in OS, discussions were very rich 
and productive, and people both suprised and satisfied.

The Social Forum program mentioned our OS in two 
separate successive times (1/2 and 2/2), so 
people probably thought that the session was 
repeated twice. Which explains why people left. 
But at the same time, I'm happy it was done like 
that, because probably a lot of people who came 
would not have come to a 4-hour session. They 
came, they invested themselves in the process and 
the topics, and great ideas came out. Even though 
many people left in the middle of the whole 
thing, I felt I was holding space for them, as 
well as for new people coming in. If I had to do 
another event in these conditions, I would 
probably gather newcomers in a circle and re-open the space for them.

Participants created the agenda and combined 
topics in a record time! They all wanted to 
discuss everything at the first round... In fact, 
it went so fast that they started their 
discussions 15 minutes before the time I had planned.

My main objective with this session was to give 
time to participants to the Social Forum to think 
and plan what they would do next, what actions 
they would put forward in their communities or 
groups or workplaces. Some topics remained very 
theoretical, and others were more concrete. One 
lady held a session by herself and was quite 
happy as she had thought about this idea for a 
while, and she used this time to put it on paper. 
It became more clear to her what she could do, and how to do it.

One of the participants said he was disappointed 
in the session because he did not see action 
planning. I explained that unfortunately, we did 
not have enough time to get to action planning, 
and also that participants are responsible for 
taking action afterwards, so it is up to him to 
get in touch with people in his group in order to 
start action. This man is one of the few who did 
not leave their coordinates for the list of 
participants. So I suspect what he really was 
disappointed in was the fact the no one would 
take responsibility for implementing his ideas. 
Another participant who was in that same small 
group later told me that this man opened his 
heart to the group and was very much in conflict 
with individual action vs. collective action, 
wanted to participate to the collective, but had 
difficulty in taking the first step. His words 
and emotion were apparently a strong moment in 
their discussion. It made people realize how 
important it was to get things moving. And they 
decided to put forward a project for a permanent 
communication structure that would keep the 
Social Forum alive. That goes to show that OS has 
results on many different levels.

My second objective was to give people attending 
the Quebec Social Forum a chance to experience 
OS, because I know how useful this can be for 
groups, particularly in community organizations. 
Some of these people liked it so much they are 
considering coming to our French OSonOS in Val-David!

It was my first public OS event, and it was a 
fantastic experience! Great learning and a lot of 
fun. Many thanks to those of you answered my queries and helped me prepare.

Cheers!

Esther
Esther Matte
Communications Esther Matte
1011, Marie-Victorin
Verchères (Québec) J0L 2R0
www.excellence.ca

"L'art de dire"

Tél. : (450) 583-5849
Téléc. : (450) 583-3513

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