The perfect follow-up

Thu Feb 1 09:12:32 PST 2007

On Tuesday I opened two days of space for Agile Open Northwest 2007,  
a new all-open space conference for people involved in developing  
software using a group of methods and approaches called "Agile." From  
the comments I heard during the OS and in the closing circle,  
everyone had a lovely, energizing and satisfying time. I did too,  
except I belong to the Agile community and, as space holder, couldn't/ 
didn't attend any of the luscious sessions everyone else proposed.

So, I fully experienced the rationale behind the suggestion that we  
don't hold space for our own communities and organizations. I  
_really_ wanted to attend some of the sessions. (e.g., a view of  
organizational change through Dr. Suess' "Green Eggs & Ham"...oh  
mama!...on popular demand, the host offered it twice!) And, I was  
involved full-time as a space holder, question bouncer ("I  
understand...and what would you like to have happen about that?"),  
facilities liaison, picker-upper, tea sipper, etc., etc. I laughed as  
I re-read Ralph's list of things to do while holding space. What do I  
do? Among things already mentioned, I read this list. I also felt  
like a flower as the butterflies would flit over to me, land, say a  
few words, and fly away again.

And, I have received the perfect gift to follow my space-holding  
experience. The opportunity to attend another open space tomorrow as  
a participant! Thank you, Brendan, Ted and other organizers of  
RecentChanges Camp! You have perfect timing for me. I look forward to  
sitting in sessions with more of "my people," geeks and community  
builders. :-)

Diana

Diana Larsen
503-288-3550 www.futureworksconsulting.com
co-author, "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great!"
Amazon Best Books of 2006
Top Ten Editors' Picks:  computer & internet
http://tinyurl.com/ynacvb

*
*
==========================================================
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

>From  Thu Feb  1 14:52:12 2007
Message-Id: <THU.1.FEB.2007.145212.0500.>
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 14:52:12 -0500
Reply-To: hhowen at verizon.net
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net>
Organization: HH Owen and Co.
Subject: Re: The perfect follow-up
In-Reply-To: <9D4ADE4B-EDAD-4F61-8890-410A99161393 at futureworksconsulting.com>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

I am really fascinated by the way the techie/geek community has apparently
discovered OS. Wonderful! And now I am waiting for the first group to fully
understand what a marvelous vehicle OS is for "real work" -- as in creating
a system and such.

Personally I have had only one such experience, and that was more than a few
years ago, but it was potent. The scene was that a company needed to create
a piece of software for a rather esoteric manufacturing process. I can't
even remember what they called the process, let alone what it did. In any
event it was definitely something for which off the shelf software would do
nothing. Pure custom job, so to speak. Custom design is never cheap and the
management was in a truly hard place. They really could not afford to do it,
and they really couldn't afford not to do it. I don't remember how I got
involved, but the best part was that everybody had run out of options, which
removed any necessity to "sell" Open Space. They were desperate.

To make a long story short, we invited everybody who cared about this
venture, which turned out to be a lot of people, and not just the usual
suspects. Two and one half days later, they had the package or at least
enough of a working model so that they knew where they were going and how to
get there. The costs were so ridiculously low that nobody could believe it,
and beyond the actual software they also had what in any other situation
would be called a co-design team composed of all interested parties. This
really paid off when it came to working out the bugs because the package
belonged to everybody which meant that the normal blame/shame game never
happened. 

I can't remember the company or even any of the people -- but I surely
remember the gathering, and it seems to me that it is about time to do it
all again. Might even make some real money if you could regularly slice
50-80% off of development time! :-)

Harrison

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland   20854
Phone 301-365-2093
Skype hhowen
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com 
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website www.ho-image.com 
OSLIST: To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the
archives Visit: www.listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Diana
Larsen
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 12:13 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: The perfect follow-up

On Tuesday I opened two days of space for Agile Open Northwest 2007,  
a new all-open space conference for people involved in developing  
software using a group of methods and approaches called "Agile." From  
the comments I heard during the OS and in the closing circle,  
everyone had a lovely, energizing and satisfying time. I did too,  
except I belong to the Agile community and, as space holder, couldn't/ 
didn't attend any of the luscious sessions everyone else proposed.

So, I fully experienced the rationale behind the suggestion that we  
don't hold space for our own communities and organizations. I  
_really_ wanted to attend some of the sessions. (e.g., a view of  
organizational change through Dr. Suess' "Green Eggs & Ham"...oh  
mama!...on popular demand, the host offered it twice!) And, I was  
involved full-time as a space holder, question bouncer ("I  
understand...and what would you like to have happen about that?"),  
facilities liaison, picker-upper, tea sipper, etc., etc. I laughed as  
I re-read Ralph's list of things to do while holding space. What do I  
do? Among things already mentioned, I read this list. I also felt  
like a flower as the butterflies would flit over to me, land, say a  
few words, and fly away again.

And, I have received the perfect gift to follow my space-holding  
experience. The opportunity to attend another open space tomorrow as  
a participant! Thank you, Brendan, Ted and other organizers of  
RecentChanges Camp! You have perfect timing for me. I look forward to  
sitting in sessions with more of "my people," geeks and community  
builders. :-)

Diana

Diana Larsen
503-288-3550 www.futureworksconsulting.com
co-author, "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great!"
Amazon Best Books of 2006
Top Ten Editors' Picks:  computer & internet
http://tinyurl.com/ynacvb

*
*
==========================================================
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

*
*
==========================================================
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