[OSList] Access Queen asks: Thinking about hosting WOSonOS in a future year? Lessons learned paper

[Lisa Heft]

Hello, dear colleagues -

I will be seeing some of you wonderful folks at the World Open Space  
on Open Space (WOSonOS) in London in October. http://wosonos2012.com

During these annual events we often share thoughts about future  
locations as we share the WOSonOS around the world.

We intentionally cross oceans back and forth so that if the WOSonOS is  
not near you during one year, it may be geographically closer to your  
part of the world the next year.

(and of course you can host an OSonOS anywhere, any time of the year -  
as I do each Spring in San Francisco and as our European colleagues do  
most years).

One of the things I do as Access Queen for our community is share  
information and collected wisdom about the things that help people  
access these annual international WOSonOS gatherings of ours.

So if you are thinking of what it takes (preparation, planning,  
timelines, traditions, team tasks, resources needed and more) to host  
a the WOSonOS in your own country in some future year, contact me  
directly at lisaheft at openingspace.net and I will send you the  
collected wisdom from past WOSonOS hosts.

I have found that...

- the work of a Host Team starts far in advance

- is best supported by a local team (instead of one passionate person  
on their own)

- and hosted where there is an existing community of practice (so that  
it is not a one-time OS experience or a first-time-with-OS experience  
but instead something that connects to local existing capacity and an  
existing OS facilitation community)

- that it is useful to have experienced at least one WOSonOS (to see  
how it differs from other OS events including some of the traditions  
shared from year to year)

- that the majority of participants come over land and shorter sea or  
air distances (so that figures into one's expectations of how many  
participants may be expected)

..and more.

My observations and others' (similar to mine and different than mine)  
are in this document and I am happy to share it with you.

My deep thanks to the WOSonOS Host Team for all their hard work  
preparing for a lovely event (and helping everyone with housing,  
registration, and more) - and to past Host Teams for sharing their  
wisdom.

And I shall see some of you in October...

Lisa
(also known as Access Queen)







-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20120714/b77e9d6c/attachment-0007.htm>