OS & Open Conferences

Mon Jan 10 06:10:36 PST 2011

Thanks for everyone’s responses so far

Apologies for not being clear.

I will try again:

At the moment this conference organising company will send out a flyer for a
conference with some speakers morning and afternoon – with a few smaller
sessions / workshops as part of the day and charge around £400 ($550).
People sign up and come along. Notionally people ‘network’ in the coffee
break sessions and otherwise sit there fairly passively. Crucially they will
have been able to justify the conference fee, time and travel costs to get
there based on the ‘expert’ speakers on the agenda. 

I am hoping to work with the conference company to put on a whole day OS
instead where the subject is one where everyone is an expert (as it were)
with something to offer, gain and invent during the process of the day. They
may well have to justify expenses / fee etc on the basis that much learning
will be exchanged but not from a list of ‘experts’ presenting as ‘normal’.
An alternative would be do this half and half – am: talking heads then
packet lunch and pm: OS. The flyers will be sent out in the usual way to a
mailing list of people in local government.

I know that OS always works – of course! But do people have any live
examples of where the format I am describing has worked – and why?

Many thanks.

(For info I attended a large progressive alliance ‘Netroots UK’ meeting in
London on Saturday – and here is my blog piece about it
(http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2011/01/process-matters.html) –
commenting on why the process could have been so much better. I have some
positive feedback from a number of people – including Will Straw who runs
‘Left Foot Forward’ a widely read left wing blog and who was partly
responsible for the event. He tweeted:

 <http://twitter.com/#!/wdjstraw> wdjstraw Will Straw 

V. interesting take on yesterday's #netrootsuk
<http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23netrootsuk>  event by @JonSHarvey
<http://twitter.com/JonSHarvey>  http://tinyurl.com/processmatters - lots to
consider for next year  )

Very best wishes

Jon

From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Harrison
Owen
Sent: 10 January 2011 13:34
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: OS & Open Conferences

Jon – I am a little unclear what you proposed, but if you are suggesting
that “talking head” sessions might be done in Open Space I think you might
find some difficulty. However, if you do a first day of talking heads
followed by a day of Open Space – that is something that has often been done
and works very well. You may get some interesting reactions – like “Why did
we waste all that time with the talking heads?” But problems like that are
good to have. J

Harrison

Harrison Owen

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From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Jon Harvey
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 7:10 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: OS & Open Conferences

Dear all

I think I have managed to persuade a public conference producer to run (and
charge for) one of their conferences using Open Space. I debated with her
that the ‘talking heads’ type of conference with a smattering of workshops
(which are usually mini plenary sessions too) could be so much more valuable
and productive if OS was used. I said I would enquire if anyone else had
done this – how did it go – what lessons did you draw?

This is something of a gamble I recognise, as this will not be quite the
kind of issue that has to be solved yesterday kind of context. (Although
given the current austerity measures which are sweeping across the UK public
services right now – a lot of things have to be solved yesterday!) Also the
people gathered will be a community of interest (ie they will all have
signed up to come to the topic in questions) but not a community / group in
any other way...

So what do people think – can this work – has this worked?

Many thanks

Very best wishes

Jon

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