[OSList] Re : OSt in 75 mins is it possible?

[Lori Palano]

Hello Mary

I run annually an open space-inspired assembly for my choir, and we manage to get some interesting work done within one hour. I believe Michael's cautions about ensuring that the open space is more than just a fancy brainstorm, that it promotes responsibility and self-organising initiative are very important to keeping the flavour of open space. Once the aspect of framing the work is taken care of, I believe interesting surprises can happen.

In my particular context, obviously choices have to be made to allow for discussion time. We are a group of around 55 people who know each other relatively well, and that helps, and we have already a system for internal communication, and that helps too. We manage to skip the opening circle, and head straight for the crunchy bits. The theme and the principles and laws are stated, and then agenda creation begins. As we do not have multiple time slots, the people who suggest topics write them on a paper that is simply posted beside where they host their conversation (agenda wall, one less thing!). Obviously this works because we are all in one big auditorium and anyone can find the conversation they want just by looking around. The open space does its magic for about 45 minutes. 

Every year at the end I play it by ear. If conversations are still going strong, we simply de-camp to our local pub and keep going until it is over. However, if there is a chance, I like to bring everyone back together for a closing for 5 minutes. Reports are simply hand-written notes at this point, but it gives us a chance to state that we feel we have moved forward on certain questions. What works really well for us is that the reports are entered directly into the forum on our internal website, groups form around these conversations and the follow-up work is self-organised that way. I usually set a date a couple of week from the assembly to say that at that point I will collate the reports as they are on the forum so that we have a trace of what came out of the assembly. In our context we do not require voting.

Even in this short example of what OS can do, the participants tend to leave energised (this is 10PM on a weekday too!) and motivated to improve our choir experience. If your theme is crunchy enough (hmmmm, I think I am craving cookies or something, I've used that image twice in this one short e-mail!) I believe the interest in doing a longer term open space could be piqued. Here I'll include a quote from Michael Herman's website

"Open Space works best when the work do be done is complex, the people and ideas involved are diverse, the passion for resolution are high, and the time to get it done was yesterday."  http://www.michaelherman.com/cgi/wiki.cgi?OpenSpaceTechnology/ExecutiveSummary


If that is not your situation, is this really the best use of Open Space? If that is the situation, something marvellous can happen in 75 minutes (but not everything!), and most everyone will be calling out for more.

Bonne Chance!
Lori




>________________________________
> De : Mary O'Connor <mary.hippychick at gmail.com>
>À : oslist at lists.openspacetech.org 
>Envoyé le : lundi 12 mars 2012 18h52
>Objet : [OSList] OSt in 75 mins is it possible?
> 
>
>Dear All, I have a question. 
>I have attended several OST events and co-run a couple. I am part of an organisation  that is interested in using OST to brainstorm for a centenary event. 
>This would be part of an AGM and there is 75 mins allocated to work out the best way to celebrate a centenary. has anyone successfully used OST in this way in such a small window of time? 
>
>
>It would also serve to open up for the organisation  some experience of OST which I know would truly benefit from a 2 day event to sort out it's future direction, the people involved are very passionate about it (it is a creative/educational organisation) . Any thoughts appreciated thank you, Mary. 
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