Fitting open space into a research conference

[Dirk Riehle]

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
	

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