Opening circle without seats

[Koos de Heer]

Hi Jon,

Great trick with the masking tape - I will remember that as I often 
work with balloons and they do seem to love their independence.

Was the Belfast city council in such a hurry to get the rogue balloon 
down? My experience is that it comes down within a day or two anyway. 
By the time the scaffolding is up, the balloon will have started to 
come down of its own accord already. Talk about self organizing... :)

Koos


At 19:30 9-8-2010, Jon Harvey wrote:
>Great stuff Csaba!
>
>I have been a fan of balloons for sometime too!
>
>If you go to my blog (http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/) you will see
>a photo of an X balloon that escaped. A group was formed to discuss how to
>bring it down. I suggested sending up the O balloon as well in the hope of
>attracting a passing giant who wanted to play tic-tac-toe / noughts &
>crosses. However the group decided the best idea was to find the lightest
>person in the group, tie all the other balloons to that individual and send
>them skywards to bring down the rogue balloon.
>
>(For information - and in all seriousness - if a balloon escapes - the way
>to get it down is to send up another balloon with some masking tape attached
>sticky side up, on the top of it. You can then attach it to the 'free'
>balloon and winch them both back to earth. I learnt this trick from a
>cleaner in Belfast City Hall who saved the council there a whole heap of
>money that was about to be spent on hiring scaffolding)
>
>Very best wishes
>
>Jon
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Csaba
>Lengyel
>Sent: 09 August 2010 16:49
>To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
>Subject: Re: Opening circle without seats
>
>Dear all,
>
>Finally we had the opening circle without chairs! I let you know what we
>experienced:
>
>We only marked the inner circle around the empty space in the middle and 4
>corridors using masking tape (it gave us a nice byzantine cross :) and it
>worked quite OK. (The only difficulty was when we called the participants
>again in the circle, they came but didn't sit down, so we had to ask them
>to sit down.)
>
>I acted as the microphone stand on the edge of the inner circle, having
>the people queuing in an outward direction so that they didn't block
>others' vision.
>
>Errr... Not exactly a microphone stand, because sound was worse with the
>pre-arranged microphones than without, so we abandoned them (we managed to
>shout all the day long, you can imagine...)
>
>The balloons to mark the breakout places worked well, I think it's a great
>solution for anything hall like place. On the other hand, based on
>Michael's remarks we didn't use the balloons to hang the charts, we simply
>put them on the wall.
>
>Altogether the event went pretty well, thank you again for all the help
>from all of you!
>
>
>Csaba
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael
>M Pannwitz
>Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2010 8:42 PM
>To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
>Subject: Re: Opening circle without seats
>
>Dear Csaba,
>when you get into the vicinity of 300 participants and somewhere between
>75 and 100 issues and have only one day and want folks to get into their
>breakout sessions without too much delay you might do what HO always
>does, be the microphone stand...I tried that with the 2108 and we were
>all surprised how quickly it went.
>Your guess at 75 issues (3 times X 25 breakoutspaces) might be a little
>on the low end. I always like to have a little reserve...which is easy
>with the balloons because participants just grab one and create their
>space.
>The balloons need to be tested! Floating signs is nice because the signs
>turn and move a bit all the time and because they are sort of out of the
>way taking up a bit of the space above people. But we were surprised how
>large the balloons had to be and how many we needed to obtain a stable
>float. You need high-quality balloons that will hold the gas well...we
>found a supplier in Berlin and got a whole bunch of balloons and some
>large bottles of Helium gas and experimented, actually it was fun and it
>turned out that we learned a lot about this simple technology.
>For the breakout sessions small balloons will do since they themselves
>carry the number of the breakout spaces...little cotton bags filled with
>sand will keep the balloons grounded.
>We actually transported the Helium bottles from Berlin to Wuerzburg in a
>station waggon...its about a 7 hour drive.
>I know you will enjoy the event!!
>Greetings from Berlin
>mmp
>
>Csaba Lengyel schrieb:
> > Dear Michael, Phelim, Peggy, Lisa and Barry,
> >
> > Thank you very much for your valuable insights related to my issue. I
>have
> > to realise againn that OSLIST is such a great community!
> >
> > Summing up the learnings:
> > - we will try to use masking tape (if allowed) to mark at least the
>inner
> > and outer circle of the sitting area + marking corridors for entry into
> > the circle (if not allowed we'll simply use Barry's suggestion - using
> > some objects/volunteers to mark the outer and inner circle
> > and "instructing" the first few people arriving at the venue how we will
> > sit)
> > - we'll consult the sponsors if there are people with specific mobility
> > issues and if yes, we arrange some facilities for them (Lisa, thank you
> > for this consideration).
> > - for announcments we will use a microphone stand at the edge of the
> > circle (something like the Berlin WOSonOS setup)
> >
> > You also gave me sports hall specific ideas (to tell the truth I haven't
> > had the chance to see the venue - also have to admit I was a bit afraid,
> > once I had a bad experience with sports hall as a potential venue, it
>was
> > so unconvenient for setting up the OS environment, we have to change
>it),
> > they are also very useful:
> > - big issue is placement of the agenda wall and the memos (I hope there
>is
> > some solution for this - I will let you know :-)
> > - the balloons for marking the breakout places and hanging the texts is
>a
> > great idea (thank you Michael - BTW, how did you get the helium tanks? :-
>)
> >
> > Also I'm quite visual, so the photos, and videos were very useful for me
> > (Peggy, Phelim, Michael special thanks to you :), also the auditorium
> > setup of Phelim is brilliantly innovative - I would have probably run
>away
> > having looked at the place...)
> >
> > The event will take place in 2 weeks time -  well... a bit close, but we
> > have just been asked to facilitate the event, so we have to live with
>it.
> > We won't see the place before next weekend (it's in a quite remote
>city),
> > but I will ask for good photos asap (now it's quite clear we might have
>a
> > lot of issues to solve...)
> >
> > I hope we can manage it :)
> >
> > Also one last question, taking into consideration that we will have 300
> > very active students for one full day of OS (let's say with 3 breakout
> > sessions), how many berakout places would you calculate? (My first guess
> > is 20-25.)
> >
> > Many thanks again from a (finally) little cooler ans windy but still
>sunny
> > Budapest afternoon,
> >
> > Csaba
> >
> >
> >
> > *
> > *
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>
>--
>Michael M Pannwitz, boscop eg
>Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin, Germany
>++49-30-772 8000
>mmpanne at boscop.org
>www.boscop.org
>
>
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