Five Years of Open Space at WikiSym (blog post from Dirk Riehle)

[Ted Ernst]

http://www.wikisym.org/2010/08/24/five-years-of-open-space-at-wikisym/

Five Years of Open Space at WikiSym August 24th, 2010 by Dirk Riehle · 1
Comment<http://www.wikisym.org/2010/08/24/five-years-of-open-space-at-wikisym/#comments>

WikiSym, as you may know, is about collaboration — open collaboration, in
which people come together on equal footing (egalitarian), where they are
valued for their contributions (meritocratic) and where they come not only
to listen but to contribute and help form the conference (self-organizing).
A wiki specifically is a technology that enables such collaboration, but of
course there are other technologies like micro-blogging, traditional blogs,
and forums. WikiSym is home to the research and practice of all of these
technologies, their applications, and social implications.

One such “technology” is open space, a meeting facilitation technique. It is
officially called open space technology to distinguish it from open space
preserves, which are about wildland. Open space helps people like event
organizers and participants to run an egalitarian, meritocratic, and
self-organizing process. Participants are pulled into creating the event,
bringing their problems and their expertise to the table. Open space itself
then is about the techniques that help participants form a joint agenda,
negotiate and allocate time-slots, and then meet and discuss their issues
until it is time to move on to the next topic and/or group.

At WikiSym, we have been using open space since 2006, after we had first
learned about it (and its wiki-ness) in 2005 (the first WikiSym). Open Space
is strong at WikiSym and with WikiSym 2010 we just passed the 5-year
anniversary of open space at WikiSym. The symposium organizers, in the
run-up to the event, create the traditional program of invited talks and
peer-reviewed research and practice talks, as well as a host of other
events. They are placed on to the agenda (schedule) and distributed evenly.
When WikiSym starts, however, after Open Space’s opening circle participants
enhance and extend the agenda with their own topics. Academics may view Open
Space as a well-organized form of BoF (birds-of-a-feather) sessions, but it
is much more than that.

The beauty of Open Space is that it gives everyone a voice and the
appropriate time and space to have it heard in a conversation. It is
supported by well-defined best practices that have been developed in Open
Space’s more than 25 years of history. Below, you can find some visual
impressions from open space at WikiSym.


Open Space session at WikiSym 2010
(photo courtesy of Eugene E. Kim <http://blueoxen.com>, taken from
Flickr<http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueoxen/4789299054/>
)

The three Open Space facilitators who have worked with us in the past are
Gerard Muller, Ted Ernst, and Karolina Iwa. We have been very happy with
them and the only reason why we are switching facilitators is to accommodate
schedules and locations as WikiSym is moving around the world.

Ted Ernst Executive Coaching
http://TedErnst.com
503-877-9214
312-371-6625
@TedErnst

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