Advice for an OS for learning & sharing for software developers

[Koos de Heer]

Dear Harold,

I can resonate with your agony. I have held a few Open Space 
conferences for IT people (up to 200) and I have had the same 
worries. But believe me, even the toughest nerds are able to function 
fine in Open Space. Be prepared to sit on your hands for a number of 
seconds. They may be slow to begin, but they will come. Those few 
seconds after you have opened the floor will last an eternity, but it 
is worth the wait! Please don't do anything to make it easy for them 
- you will ruin the feeling of accomplishment. Just keep breathing.

Koos


At 19:20 14-1-2008, Harold Shinsato wrote:
>Dear Owen,
>
>Thank you, it's such an honor to get a reply directly from you.  I think my
>issue is faith in myself and in the process.  I've read the book (some
>chapters more than once).  I think maybe I just needed to hear it again in a
>different way to help me "get" it.  I appreciate the encouragement.  I've
>seen Open Space work in other scenarios and I just need to trust that people
>will bring the topics that they care about.  But I keep thinking I have to
>"do" something to make it work, to allow people to bring questions or topics
>like "How can we lead in a 50K Conglomerate?" and not just some engineering
>topic that they had to spend a week preparing a powerpoint based on their
>prior experience, which is the "box".
>
>It's like an ugly itch in the brain, but is there some way to help me quiet
>it down?  I keep seeing this image of me opening the space and then no one
>filling in any topic cards, or just a few that didn't get put in the first
>tracks.  Has anyone had experience in a similar situation for 30-50
>engineers in a single department but working on different projects?
>
>      Harold
>
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