Balloons as an Ice Breaker

Wed May 12 13:54:04 PDT 2010

Lucas - Sounds like a lot of fun. And I know on the basis of long
experience, being an old Fed myself, that Feds are just like every other
human being on the planet. When they first sit down in the circle they may
think it is a little bit weird. However, if you will just go right ahead
with the "Standard opening" - Welcome to Open Space as you walk the circle -
move right to the reason for the gathering (We are here today to solve the
problems of transparency) hit the four principles, one law, the admonition
(prepare for surprises) - and if you keep all of that to 15-20 min they will
be hard at work identifying their issues and never look back. Don't worry
about making them feel comfortable - just open the space and get the folks
working. After all that is why they came (I hope). Anything else is just a
distraction, I think. Have fun!

Harrison

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

Phone 301-365-2093

www.openspaceworld.com

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

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From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Lucas
Cioffi
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:36 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Balloons as an Ice Breaker

Howdy All, 

Bottom line up front: How do you break the ice with participants unfamiliar
to OS?

Here's one way I found helpful:

I recently facilitated an open space workshop for sixty participants from
roughly two dozen federal agencies.  The topic was how to make government
more transparent, participatory, and collaborative as part of the
Administration's Open
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive>
Government Directive.

I'm a novice at OS, but I've learned a bunch from this list and I'm happy to
offer an idea which may be helpful to others.  OS can be intimidating,
especially for government employees, so I opened with a collaborative
exercise using balloons.  The inspiration came from a landscape architect's
presentation where he accented a landscape with huge balloon sculptures to
give it a playful feel for adults.

Rules of the Game:

*	Everyone gets 2 colored balloons in a sealed envelope.
*	There is a point system posted on the wall (Red = 5, Orange = 4,
Yellow = 3, Green = 2, Blue = 1).
*	Collaboration through trading is heavily incentivized-- if someone
ends up with a pair of balloons which are the same color, then their score
is multiplied times three.  This encourages people to mingle and create
win-win scenarios.  There are no restrictions on how balloons can be traded
(for example trading 1 for 1, 2 for 1, or even 0 for 1).
*	Participants are given three minutes to inflate and trade their
balloons.  The goal is to have the most points.  (An alternate goal could be
to maximize the number of points for the entire group rather than
individuals.)

Reasons why we opened with a game:

*	Make it clear that this was a place where it's OK to be creative,
unlike their standard government workplace
*	Prime the audience for the subject matter of collaboration (learn by
doing)
*	Have some fun
*	Build a bit of community among the participants who were mostly
strangers (incentivize mingling).
*	Create a shared experience.
*	Create a little chaos.
*	Jazz up the place visually with a few balloons (it needed some
color)

Reasons why we opened with this game for this workshop

Thomas Jefferson had a saying that "He who receives ideas from me, receives
instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at
mine receives light without darkening me."  After the exercise I asked the
participants what the difference was between trading a physical object (like
a balloon) and sharing an idea; this exercise was lively and helped them
understand that their purpose during the workshop was to share knowledge and
benefit from others doing the same.

Each month a different agency hosts this workshop for all the other
agencies, and to keep the workshops fresh, our next opener will consist of
small collaborative teams competing to build the tallest
marshmallow-spaghetti tower (here's a fascinating TED video
<http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower.html>  which describes
some stats behind this game).

Any thoughts?  Do you open with games or collaborative exercises that you
would recommend?  As always, thanks for the discussion!

Lucas

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