Why is a grid sometimes useful?

Peggy Holman peggy at opencirclecompany.com
Sun Aug 9 20:54:55 PDT 2009


To grid or not to grid...

For me, it depends.  Two circumstances lead me to offer more order.

Size.  As the size of the group increases, there are more sessions to  
track.  With a larger group, I post times along the top of the agenda  
wall.  Like Lisa, I often use different colors for different times.   
When I did the OS for 2,100 street kids in Bogota, we set up a grid;  
each time had its own wall and we put the room numbers across the rows:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78084501@N00/79452637/in/set-1700469/

It just seemed the best way to support the crowd in finding sessions  
of interest.

Culture.  The other circumstance in which I've used a grid is when the  
culture of the group seems to call for it.  As Kaliya noted, engineers  
seem more productive with a grid.  I think it is for them, one less  
thing.

Speaking of culture, one of the most telling images for me is the OS  
of 2108 that Harrison and Michael did in Wurtzberg and the 2,100  
street kids.  As people waited to announce their sessions in Germany,  
they were in a neat line.  The street kids looked like a mob around  
Andres, who held the mic.  In both cases, it was orderly but the image  
was sure different!

Wurzberg:  http://www.transformation.at//?art_id=46
(pages 39-41)


Colombia:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78084501@N00/79454421/in/set-1700469/

Peggy




______________________________
Peggy Holman
The Open Circle Company
15347 SE 49th Place
Bellevue, WA  98006
425-746-6274
www.opencirclecompany.com
www.journalismthatmatters.org

For the new edition of The Change Handbook, go to:
www.bkconnection.com/ChangeHandbook

"An angel told me that the only way to step into the fire and not get  
burnt, is to become
the fire".
   -- Drew Dellinger






On Aug 7, 2009, at 6:00 AM, Harrison Owen wrote:

> Artur – we will be looking forward to your return! And an odd  
> thought passed through my muddled mind. It occurred to me, I think  
> because you mentioned being an engineer that it might somehow appear  
> that “getting organized”  and “being organized” are somehow anathema  
> to Open Space. It might even seem that I have implied as much – if  
> so that would be a massive mistake on my part. The issue is not  
> “organization” – but who does it and when does it happen? The truth  
> of the matter is that every Open Space is highly organized, usually  
> more so than any facilitator or planning committee could ever imagine.
>
> Consider 2108 German psychiatrists X 236 concurrent sessions in an 8  
> hour period. That would take a planning committee years! And they  
> would never get it right -- things would always be late, and great  
> frustration would be a predictable outcome. In the instance, the  
> people did it all themselves in something less than an hour and it  
> all worked out perfectly including written reports for all or most  
> of the sessions. Now Mr Engineer, Can you beat that? Just kidding J
>
> For me the real issue is efficiency and effectiveness – which are  
> presumably positive values that all engineers will ascribe to. In  
> that case the only question is how do you get there fastest and  
> bestest? The curious answer would seem to be Do Less!
>
> Harrison
>
> Harrison Owen
> 189 Beaucaire Ave
> Camden, ME 04843
> 207-763-3261 (Summer)
> 301-365-2093 (Winter)
> Website www.openspaceworld.com
> Personal Website www.ho-image.com
> OSLIST To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
>
>
>
> From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of  
> Artur Silva
> Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 6:57 AM
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Subject: Re: Why is a grid sometimes useful?
>
> Being out of my office with bad internet contact and short of time,  
> I only red some of this rich exchange.
>
> I must say, like Bernd, that, probably because of my education as an  
> engineer, I never thought about doing it without a grid. And living  
> in a Chatolic country, even with a grid, most managers think that  
> OST is too much for them...
>
> But then some coments from Harrison and Lisa make me think...
>
> I will continue to think, and after the 18th, with better conexion,  
> I will coment something.
>
> But don´t ask me what ;-)
>
> Regards from the countryside somewhere in the north of Portugal
>
> Artur
>
> -----------
>
> --- On Thu, 8/6/09, Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> From: Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: [OSLIST] Why is a grid sometimes useful?
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 5:17 AM
>
> Lesley, I think you got it! (“It is my sense of things that the more  
> we order….the more we take away from the process……..however this can  
> be very uncomfortable for us(facilitator”). It is all about  
> organizing a self organizing system. Not only is that an oxymoron,  
> but also of questionable intelligence – regardless of the alleged  
> increase of comfort.
>
> Harrison
>
>
>
>
> * * ========================================================== 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


*
*
==========================================================
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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20090809/95ce1a1d/attachment-0016.htm>


More information about the OSList mailing list