I did it - My First OS

Bui Petersen bui.petersen at gmail.com
Tue Apr 28 06:25:00 PDT 2009


I did it.

I facilitated my first Open Space on Saturday. As expected, it was small 
(only 7 people including myself). We only had 3 hours for discussions 
and action planning. Thanks to the great suggestions on this forum, I 
created the following schedule:

9-9:30 Opening (agenda creation)
9:30-10:10 Session I
10:10-10:50 Session II
10:50-11:30 Session III
11:30-12:00 Opening for Action

I did as brief an introduction as I could while still covering all the 
points. 11 topics were posted. Several were combined. It was interesting 
that the most central topic happened to be posted first and that 
everyone joined that discussion. I think that probably everyone needed 
to part of that discussion. This session also went way over time 
compromising the time left for other topics. However, I don't think this 
was a problem because the other topics didn't need as much discussion 
once the first one had been thoroughly dealt with. I kept reminding 
myself of, "Whatever happens is the only thing that could have."

As I am an integral member of the group, it was interesting staying out 
of the discussion. I had told the group that I for the most part would 
play a butterfly role. Someone suggested that I participate more 
actively but I don't think there was any need since everything I thought 
of saying, was said by someone else.

When it came to the Action Planning, things did not work quite that 
well. I think there was to little time for reopening the space and 
people generally got confused about what to do. It would have been 
better if there had been a substantial break before that. When I noticed 
the confusion setting in, I decided to facilitate more actively by 
helping to identifying action items and people responsible for them 
(actually all I did was write on a flip chart what people were saying). 
If there had been more time, someone else might had figured out to do this.

Overall it was a great experience. Not all the topics were "officially" 
discussed but they were touched on enough for everyone to be happy.

Being my first time facilitating OST, I was surprised by the the amount 
of preparation needed with signs, schedule etc. For such a small group 
and only 3 hours, it seemed to be overkill. I think I will simplify it 
next time. Ideally we should be able to open space every time we meet, 
without having to be so regimented about it.

Thanks you all for your wonderful suggestions and support.

Bui

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