[OSList] Knowledge sharing open space?

[Lisa Heft]

Hi, Dicky -

Yes, I would say what Harrison says: "No difference".

Well, perhaps a few little adjustments in how you describe it to  
participants. As you always would customize your description /  
invitation for your participants' culture and context - in any kind of  
Open Space event.

I do a lot of Open Space conferences and other knowledge-sharing Open  
Space events.
There is not what some would say is a requirement - sense of urgency -  
but participants self-select to come to a knowledge-sharing event  
(conference, forum, issues summit) because they are passionate about  
the topics, challenges, projects and discoveries in that field / that  
topic. So no problem there - there is definitely the energy you need  
for a good Open Space.

I would say to do the same thing as one would always do (perhaps the  
host / client team is doing these things and you can help with  
questions and lessons learned from other events)
- compelling invitational language for their culture
- inviting the full system / diversity into the room (which can be  
harder than just putting the word out - but with much better results -  
real invitation and outreach *strategy* and creativity and whatever it  
takes to bring in diverse experience, culture and thinking
- for example: knowledge sharing amongst university folks and...health  
care consumers / patients, doctors, nurses, health advocates, home  
care providers, students, researchers...? What might inform the full  
system? Depends of course on what your overarching objective / reason  
for bringing people together is. But as with all our work in any  
setting: diversity brings richness.

Sometimes for academic folks it helps to find out if the host can  
offer education credits so they can better attend an event.
And if you have students helping - it helps to arrange to give them  
school credit for their time.
Valuing everyone and sharing resources as this does.

A lot of times a knowledge-sharing event does not need action planning  
built into it because the majority of participants are served by the  
conversations, connections, co-learning and networking. It is not  
always an intact working group. So they may or may not have focus and  
energy to meet around topics post-event (as in some organizations  
where they can hold topic-specific work groups post-event to continue  
the work) but they will surely benefit from the dialogue, the Book of  
Proceedings from their event, and the participant contact information  
at the end of that Book - all of which will help them continue  
networking or find each other to re-group around a topic at some  
future time if any individual or group who attended may find this  
might be useful.

Perhaps you were thinking of the book I give to participants of some  
of my workshops - I have a book on Open Space I have written. Right  
now it is not available as I am re-formatting, re-writing and updating  
it - the older version had a bit of a hard time making it through my  
changing computer systems. Which was probably a great message to let  
me know that a new fresh approach was needed. I promise to announce  
the book on the OSLIST when it can come back into the world.  Soon? in  
several months? Time (and life) will tell....

Warm wishes for great success in your Monday meeting.
Lisa



Lisa Heft
Consultant, Facilitator, Educator
Opening Space
lisaheft at openingspace.net

Ask me about these 2011 workshops for facilitators and others who  
convene people:
  - The Open Space Learning Workshop
         - May 4-6 and December 14-16 - San Francisco, USA
         - June and October - Santiago, Chile (en español)
         - June - Buenos Aires, Argentina (en español)
  - The Power of Pre-Work - August 24-26 - San Francisco, USA
  - Documenting Dialogue - Coming soon


On Apr 6, 2011, at 11:03 PM, Methorst, Dicky wrote:

> Lisa, you mention a book about knowledge sharing Open Space or Open
> Space in university settings. In what aspects is it different from any
> other Open Space? I have been asked to facilitate a knowledge sharing
> event on healthcare. I'm having a discussion with them on them next
> Monday, so I am really interested to know from more experienced people
> what I should take into account when doing the open space on knowledge
> sharing.
>
> Warm regards
>
> Dicky Methorst

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