[OSList] Conversation today with Brian Burt of MaestroConference

Gabriela Ender gabriela.ender at gmail.com
Thu Aug 30 05:56:02 PDT 2012


Dear Open Space colleagues and friends,
 
Yesterday I came back from a wonderful five-day retreat of silence – no
mobile phone – no computer. I do this from time to time to find distance
from the fast, loud, often ego-centric and greedy world. I was meditating
about the future of respect and appreciation among different cultures,
countries, religious and organizations.
 
Back to Internet access, I found the initial email from Suzanne Daigle and
all your new discussions in order to help developing another product for
virtual Open Spaces. Ups
.. Maybe some of you understand, that this
situation first felt a bit strange 
 especially when “just coming home from
a peaceful retreat”  ;-). But whatever happens 
 make the best out of it.
 
I think, if Brian Burt and his company MaestroConference want to develop and
market specific products to enable virtual Open Spaces, it would be helpful,
if Brain and I find (at an early stage of his investment) a good and fair
solution of clear visible differentiation. I have trust in the spirit of
Open Space that at the end, all will keep having fun – including me and my
company.
 
Hi Brain, if you read this, you are warmly invited to get in contact with
me. I am sure, it would be nice to meet online or much better offline in
Berlin ;-) 
 Berlin is just one hour and a bit flight from London (in case
you join the OSonOS event in the UK and have time before or afterwards).
Let’s talk from entrepreneur to entrepreneur in respect to the old wonderful
Open Space community and in respect to our pioneer work since 1999. I am
looking forward to hear from you. Here my email address:
gabriela.ender at OpenSpace-Online.com
<mailto:gabriela.ender at OpenSpace-Online.com> .
 
For those who are interested, here a brief update of what is going on with
OpenSpace-Online®:
 
Many of you know my vision and how extensive my flash of inspiration in
summer 1999 was and how far ahead of time I was with my concept. Bringing
OpenSpace-Online in a world where almost nobody had an idea of online
participation was not easy. It became a life work with huge financial
investments over the last 13 years.
 
In the meantime, our conference system is used in over 60 countries and is
enhanced regularly. More and more, we see ourselves at the edge of realizing
the next phase of this long-term vision. We have a near perfect
user-feedback-rate after conferences of happy users and have collected
hundreds of “user-feedbacks and user-ideas” during the last 10 years.
Together with international business partners, we will create a completely
different platform for virtual Open Space conferences. Our partners and we
are thrilled about this new project. Since February our main focus is to
bring the next phase of this old vision to full reality. This platform will
allow for cost-free OpenSpace-Online® meetings around the globe in almost
all languages for small and for large groups. All of you who feel the
spirit, the meaning and the impact of our never-ending efforts for a better
world, please send us your blessings to make it a reality. One day, when we
will reach the beta platform, you will be again (as in 2002) the first ones
who are invited to use and to test all. Be patient and ready to be surprised
in the future ;-)
 
Recently, for example, we realized together with the German Federal Ministry
of the Interior and the German Association of Towns and Municipalities an
OpenSpace-Online® Conference called “Demographic-Online-Conference”.
www.online-demografie-conference.de.  This nationwide project targeted
mayors as well as administrative authorities involved with demographics
throughout Germany. The German Government is now calling this
OpenSpace-Online project a flagship of their dialog strategy. This is a
great success for us and also for Open Space in general. Based on this I am
invited to a Government Summit with Angela Merkel this October. This is
unfortunately the reason why I cannot come to London to join the OSonOS
event this year. You can imagine how much I would love to be there. I am
sure, that our colleagues from the UK are preparing an extraordinary
wonderful event. The OSonOS invitation website is so beautiful and I do
remember the heartily and touching invitation in Berlin 2010 so well. I will
miss being in London a lot.
 
Thank you all so much for your support during all the years and particularly
a big THANK YOU to you dear Harrison!

Warmly from Berlin
Gabriela Ender

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] Im Auftrag von Suzanne
Daigle
Gesendet: Freitag, 24. August 2012 04:50
An: World wide Open Space Technology email list
Betreff: [OSList] Conversation today with Brian Burt of MaestroConference


Exciting to imagine! A virtual interface specifically geared to Open Space.
Brian Burt, CEO and Founder of MaestroConference, and I were on the phone
for about 30 minutes this afternoon.  It was a “jump right in” kinda
conversation with lots of give and take.  No doubt about it,
MaestroConference has been giving this some thought and Brian Burt knows the
process, principles and language of Open Space.

In some cases their technology is there and stuff could happen right away;
other things need to be figured out and then of course, you can’t totally
replicate an in-person experience of Open Space so a hybrid virtual
adaptation would need to be developed.


We talked about the big picture of a Virtual Open Space Social Webinar
platform that would allow hundreds and even thousands of people to
participate. We also discussed some of the challenges; for example: “can you
really have a virtual conversation with 50 people on-line engaged in one
topic or would we need to break into smaller groups” and “how could we
manage a post-it board with time and place”. 

Brian’s plan, along with other folks at Maestro Conference, is to host a
Virtual Open Visioning Event this Fall inviting lots of people (it would be
terrific if many joined) from the Open Space community and folks in the
technology world (major users of Open Space) to engage in working
conversations around the interface, the implementation, the applications of
where and how a virtual OS could be used, the invitation process and so much
more.

What I was able to convey to Brian is that there are many practitioners in
this worldwide OS community, including the OSI US Board, who are interested
and excited about having a virtual Open Space platform. I’ll be the first to
say that I’m not the expert (nor the leader) in that regard but I certainly
have the passion and am willing to roll up my sleeves with others to help
make it happen. 

At Brian’s request, I’ve agreed to lend a hand if people want to advise off
list that they are interested, feel free to email me. You can also do it
publicly on the OS list and I’ll keep track. MaestroConference is also
interested in knowing if anyone has people they’d recommend who should be
invited to the Fall Event.

In anticipation of the Virtual Open Visioning Event being planned, perhaps
we can continue the conversations on our OS list sharing what we would hope
to see, what questions we have, how we may want to contribute to this
effort. My specific interest related to the virtual technology is having the
ability to host post-events after a face-to-face Open Space, continuing the
conversations and driving some of the actions and initiatives that
participants identified.

An early Call to Action that may help Maestro Conference
<http://maestroconference.com/>  in their planning! What do y'all think? 

Suzanne



Suzanne Daigle
NuFocus Strategic Group
7159 Victoria Circle
University Park, FL 34201
FL 941-359-8877;  
CT 203-722-2009
www.nufocusgroup.com
s.daigle at nufocusgroup.com
twitter @suzannedaigle









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