OS & Open Conferences

Mon Jan 10 06:15:34 PST 2011

big challenge to the business model of a firm like this - these days if people 
value their peer experts and recognise them as such and cant get together by 
other means (online networks etc?) then they may still be adding some value, but 
perhaps the underlying transaction becomes more of a barrier than an enabler?

Anne

________________________________
From: Jon Harvey <jon at jonharveyassociates.co.uk>
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Sent: Monday, 10 January, 2011 14:10:36
Subject: Re: OS & Open Conferences

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:

wdjstraw Will Straw 
V. interesting take on yesterday's #netrootsuk event by 
@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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