OS as post-conference session

[Communications Esther Matte]

Hi everyone,

At the end of August, there will be, in Montreal, 
a "Forum social québécois" - like the Social 
Forums that happened in Bresil and around the 
world in the last few years, but with a focus on 
Quebec society. They did their programming in a 
very open manner, people registering sessions 
they wanted to hold. Too bad I didn't find out 
about this thing earlier, as I would have 
proposed an OST format for the whole thing!

So, I'm playing with the idea of proposing an OST 
session for the end of the event. My goal is to 
have some of these people experience OST because 
I think it could be a very useful tool for the 
participating organizations. What would be great 
is that if any of them are then interested in 
exploring OST further, they could participate to 
our OSONOS in French, in September.

I'm thinking of a 4-hour session, with a theme 
like "What have we learned at this Forum and how 
will we use it?" These events can be very 
stimulating and inspiring, leaving people full of 
energy, ideas and good intentions. However, once 
back to the "real life", the day-to-day stuff 
tends to overtake calendars and it's ofen very 
difficult to follow-up on the original good 
intentions. So an OST post-conference session 
could give people space, a time and a place, to 
focus on which learnings are most important to 
them, discuss how they can use it, network and 
start planning what they will do next.

However, I see a potential problem: there will be 
lots of people coming from all kinds of sectors 
and backgrounds, some quite formal, like unions, 
some quite informal, like citizens groups. And 
there are many "tracks" to the Forum, like Human 
Rights, Environment,  Public Services, Work, 
Social Economy, etc. So there will really be no common basis, no unique focus.

Maybe a theme like "what more do we want to learn 
and share and teach and discover with each other 
before we all go our separate ways‘ could work 
better. Or "what next", so that the people in one 
"track" might  decide, in their sessions, to come 
together to my OS session to plan the next steps.

I have a feeling it's a good idea, but not sure 
how to work it out. Any experiences, thoughts, 
warnings? I will greatly appreciate any comment.

I still haven't approached anyone with my idea. 
Just playing with it for now. I need to see this 
happening clearly in my head first :-)

Thanks a million!  
*
*
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