Fitting open space into a research conference

Deborah Hartmann deborah at hartmann.net
Mon Dec 3 05:35:22 PST 2007 

OK, real world: here we go.

ONE: Qcon London
---------------------
I sponsored a one-day track in a regular conf  like this:
 - Opening the Space (plenary for this track: all participants in my 
track were invited, nothing else was planned within my track at this time)
 - Sessions (OS and "talking heads" in parallel, in two different but 
near-by spaces, sessions timed so people could wander between the two 
with less disruption )
 - Closing the Space (plenary).

You can see our schedule online here:
http://qcon.infoq.com/london-2007/tracks/show_track.jsp?trackOID=38

One interesting side effect was: some of the people who were waiting 
only for the talking heads sessions came to the Opening because there 
wasn't anything else, and so they learned about OpenSpace. We had a 
small group, perhaps 120 people in all, of which about 40 came to the 
Opening Circle. This might be different from other conferences, in that 
some people came to the conf particularly for this track, so we were not 
necessarily competing with the other three tracks happening on that day.

I wasn't in the room much, as I was hosting two tracks at once, and of 
course the talking heads one took a lot more work! :-)
Diana Larsen was our facilitator (yay!). Diana, do you have any 
reflections on how that event worked for the participants?

XPdays NorthAmerica:
-----------------------
We used to run the Opening Circle in parallel to a tutorial. When we 
stopped doing that, the complexion of the event changed. It felt more 
like a party, there was more flow between OS and tutorials, because 
poeple understood the rules of engagement in the (very new to them) Open 
Space area. Now, these are small events, 30 to 50 people.

Agile conferences:
------------------
At Agile2006 (1100 participants) the Opening Circle was run opposite 
about twelve other tracks. Turnout was small (20 people?) and very 
disappointing for some of us who attended - we felt OS hadn't been given 
the attention it needed at that event, to let it really energise people. 
Mind you, some great sessions still took place! However, in my opinion, 
this is an antipattern. Making the Opening Circle more of a plenary 
event (maybe only putting one or two events opposite it?) might help. 
Some of us would like to see the whole event opened with the Opening 
Circle, but it's a real conundrum, with 1600 people expected at our next 
event. Multiple, concurrent Opening Circles might be fun! We'll see what 
this year's committee has in mind - I'm not on it.

Who else has stories about this? Kaliya, I bet.
Have a good week
deb


Communications Esther Matte wrote:
> Hello again Dirk,
>
> Woke up this morning wondering if it would work to have the wall 
> divided in three parts: the individual scheduled events grouped on say 
> the left part of the wall and the rest open to topics people will put 
> up, the right side being reserved for "new topics" after the opening 
> on the Monday. You would open the space on the Monday, and then people 
> would self-manage for the rest of the week, and closing on the last day.
>
> I can see this working in my head with break-out rooms, at least a few 
> for discussions, and one for the News Room and posted reports so that 
> anyone can walk in and read if they wish to, even while someone is 
> presenting in the main hall. Now in real life... any thoughts anyone?
>
> Cheers from snow-stormed Verchères :-)
>
> Esther
>
> At 23:00 2007-12-01, you wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I'm involved with a variety of research conferences and would like to 
>> better understand how you can fit open space into a research 
>> conference with a set time-grid and competing events. I searched the 
>> OSList archives and the web but didn't find anything so I hope it is 
>> ok to ask here. (And a pointer to a previous discussion would be a 
>> perfect and much appreciated answer.)
>>
>> The research conferences I'm involved in typically have a fixed time 
>> grid with two morning slots of 90min (30min coffee break in between), 
>> lunch, and two afternoon slots of 90min (also 30min coffee break in 
>> between). We have had open space at two such conferences now, and in 
>> both cases it worked, but open space remained in competition with 
>> "the regular program" i.e. set talks. We tried to schedule the open 
>> space opening and ending to be without competing event but that made 
>> them very early (late) i.e. at 8am and at 5pm. The reason open space 
>> worked was certainly the excellent facilitators we got, but also the 
>> enthusiasm of folks at these about 100 people conferences.
>>
>> I'm trying to bring this now to a much larger research conference, 
>> which has > 1000 people attending. I only have control over "my 
>> track" but that track has considerable influence. Open space is 
>> viewed as an experiment as it has never been done before at this 
>> conference. I get one day with no competing events (Monday) and then 
>> three days of the main conference (Tue-Thu) with lots of competing 
>> events. On Monday we can structure the day the way we want it, on 
>> Tue-Thu we have the aforementioned 90min sessions with coffee breaks 
>> and lunch in between. Typical problems I expect and wonder how to 
>> deal with them:
>>
>> - plenty of folks who attend don't know much about open space
>> - many folks will show up in the middle of the day or just 30min late 
>> not knowing how it works expecting to participate
>> - the competing events will make people come and go in a disruptive 
>> way (but maybe that's just the law of the two feet :-)
>>
>> This year (2008), we have two specific additional challenges
>>
>> - we have no idea how many people will actually show up for the open 
>> space part
>> - space is at a premium, we may have to share a large hall so I 
>> wonder whether that's disruptive as well
>>
>> Also, does it make sense to have open space afternoons (rather than 
>> full days)? I'm thinking of reducing event competition by having open 
>> space in the afternoon only on the three busy days Tuesday-Thursday.
>>
>> The event will take place in Oct 2008 and we'll try to be smart about 
>> it until then to take some of the guesswork out of the equation. I.e. 
>> early engagement like inquiring about expected open space 
>> participation at registration time.
>>
>> Also, I'm a big fan of wikis, and intend to build up buzz and 
>> pre-organization on a wiki leading up to the conference itself.
>>
>> Any thoughts would be appreciated.
>>
>> Dirk
>>
>>
>> PS: We will be looking for a facilitator. Obviously, this is a paid 
>> job, though the research conference itself is not rich. Here a first 
>> blurp:
>>
>> Open Space Facilitation Engagement Oct 2008 Nashville TN
>>
>> For OOPSLA 2008, we are looking for an experienced open space 
>> facilitator near Nashville, TN. Your engagement will be to facilitate 
>> one full (and hopefully intense) day of open space + several half 
>> days. Part of the job is explaining open space to those who don't 
>> know it yet---which we expect to be many as this is the first attempt 
>> of having open space at OOPSLA. OOPSLA is a >1000 people computer 
>> science (research) conference, but we expect a significantly smaller 
>> number of people to participate in the open space part only (current 
>> estimate is between 100 and 300). Location is Nashville Convention 
>> Center, time and date is October 2008, with initial and occasional 
>> consultations before then to prepare for the meeting. For further 
>> questions, please contact Dirk Riehle, dirk at riehle.org
>>
>> -- 
>> Phone: + 1 (650) 215 3459
>> Web: http://www.riehle.org
>>
>>
>> *
>> *
>> ==========================================================
>> 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
>>
>> __________ Information NOD32 2697 (20071202) __________
>>
>> Ce message a ete verifie par NOD32 Antivirus System.
>> http://www.nod32.com
>>
>
> *
> *
> ==========================================================
> 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
>
>

-- 

Deborah Hartmann
Agile Process Improvement Coach
Lead Editor for InfoQ.com/Agile
deborah.hartmann.net
416.996.4337

"My advice is to do it by the book,
get good at the practices,
then do as you will.
Many people want to skip to step three.
How do they know? " -- Ron Jeffries 


*
*
==========================================================
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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20071203/ab4337b3/attachment-0007.htm>

More information about the OSList mailing list