online OS support

[Jack Martin Leith]

Hiya Marissa.

Good question.

A friend of mine (www.edmitchell.co.uk) specialises in blending face-to-face
gatherings with web tools.

One of the things he's discovered is that you need to make the "user name
and password" bit part of the event registration process. In other words,
every participant in the OS meeting is automatically joined up with whatever
online tool you've decided to use. If this doesn't happen, at the end of the
event people say they'll sign up for the wiki, blog, forum or whatever, but
interia sets in and the post-event efforts run out of steam. That's not
going to happen every time, and may not happen in your case, but it's worth
remembering for the future.

In terms of technology, a wiki is probably the easiest to organise. There
are several free wiki providers, including pbwiki (
https://secure.pbwiki.com/signup.wiki) and Wikispaces
(www.*wikis*paces.com<http://www.wikispaces.com/>
).

I have a policy of making it the responsibility of the participants to post
reports online or email them to all concerned (including those who didn't
take part). The reports belong to the participants. I make it clear that
it's not my job to type-up handwritten reports and circulate them, even when
I'm being paid a pile of money for my services!

I'm a bit out of touch with email lists. Does anyone out there have state of
the art info on this?

You can find some info about *how to keep up post-event momentum* here:
www.jackmartinleith.com/?page_id=156. I've discovered that there's often a
need for a *project co-ordination team*, composed of all project
managers/co-ordinators. Most importantly, the team needs to include a member
of the senior management group. This ensures ongoing management attention
and connects the projects with the resource allocation process.

In case you're interested, the theory behind this way of working is Stafford
Beer's *viable system model* (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_System_Model). The project co-ordination
team acts as "system 2" and knits together the various project teams (so the
left hand knows what the right hand is doing) and creates a bridge between
all the project teams and the top management group.

I've also discovered that the project teams are also learning groups. If the
OS was for an organisation rather than a community, the project teams are
where new ways of working are tried out. They are learning labs for the
wider organisation. Any breakdowns need to be celebrated and embraced as
opportunities for learning and breakthrough. And there needs to be a
mechanism for spreading the learnings throughout the wider organisation.

Two powerful (when used well) approaches to explore, if you don't already
know about them:

*Action learning*: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_learning
*After action reviews*: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Action_Review

That's a very quick reponse. I hope it helps.

Jack

Jack Martin Leith
Creative activist
Bristol, United Kingdom
Mobile: 07831 840541 (+44 7831 840541)
Skype: jackmartinleith
email: jack at jackmartinleith.com
www.jackmartinleith.com


2008/9/15 marissa zamudio <marissazamudio at hotmail.com>

>  Dear fellow OSers,
>
> I am doing a one day Open Space event in two weeks and have pretty much all
> the arrangements in place.  We will have time for depth discussions and no
> time for plan of actions or next steps.
>
> I am anticipating that this group will want to continue some of the
> work (continue conversations, action plans, etc) online and I am not sure I
> know how to proceed or support the group after the OS event.
>
> I would appreciate suggestions on what ohters have done along this line
> that has worked for OS groups.  This will be a relatively small group.  I
> look
> forward to your ideas.
>
> ------------------------------
> Want to do more with Windows Live? Learn "10 hidden secrets" from Jamie. Learn
> Now<http://windowslive.com/connect/post/jamiethomson.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!550F681DAD532637!5295.entry?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_domore_092008>
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