[OSList] Entirely-online OSs?

Sat Apr 20 09:21:44 PDT 2013

Hi James, Harold, Béatrice, and others interested,

I and a colleague, Eiwor Backelund, have developed an online OST process
using Blackboard Collaborate. This is the process that Harold participated
in through my website www.wisdomways.net and mentions in his email below.
However, we have now moved our process to a new website
www.collaborativeways.com. Eiwor and I are both co-owners of the Genuine
Contact™ Program, but as Harold says, the online OST process we have
developed is separate from Genuine Contact. 

Our OST process stays very true to the in-person OST process. People gather
visually in an online circle at the beginning. A live facilitator holds
space and opens the space with the theme,  principles and law. There is a
blank agenda board where participants are invited to propose topics for
discussion and select the time and breakout space when they would like to
have the meeting. Participants can move themselves to the breakouts, use the
law of two feet to "bumblebee" from room to room and there is a butterfly
room where they can sit and reflect. There is a closing circle at the end
and if it is a multiple-day meeting, there is morning and evening news.  

The Blackboard environment has whiteboards for notes and drawing, chat,
voice, emocons, desktop application sharing and video capability, so it is a
very rich environment to dialogue and create reports. We provide a Book of
Proceedings after the meeting. We have also done multi-day meetings
including convergence of ideas and action planning at the end of the
meeting. Our total capacity is about 100 participants with as many breakout
rooms as we like. Overall it is just like OST, except the rooms are online.
Because it is online, we also have the added capability of moving the topics
to online forums for further discussion between sessions or after the OST
meeting. 

To get everyone comfortable with the technology prior to the online OST, we
have also added  a short online self-study course which allows them to test
their connections and get familiar with the online tools in Blackboard. We
did this because one of the biggest barriers that I have found to online
meetings is the unfamiliarity with the online interface or connection
issues. If something is not done prior to the online meeting, invariably the
meeting may get delayed trying to get people connected or productive in the
space. 

If anyone would like to experience this, we have an free OST this coming
Thursday April 25 at 9am MST, (15:00 UTC/GMT) on the theme: Exploring
Conscious Capitalism. The meeting will not be recorded(except the written
reports) so please sign up only if you are intending to actually
participate. The link for more information and to register is:
<http://www.collaborativeways.com/April25ConsciousCapitalism>
http://www.collaborativeways.com/April25ConsciousCapitalism 

Hope you can join in and play with us in a future OST meeting!

Blessings,
Richard Schultz
402-247-8042
CollaborativeWays
www.collaborativeways.com

From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Harold Shinsato
Sent: April-19-13 5:24 PM
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list
Subject: Re: [OSList] Entirely-online OSs?

James,

Online Open Space has been done a number of times.

The text based system that uses a very thorough Open Space Technology
grounding and is quite mature is Gabriele Ender's
http://www.openspace-online.com/.

Open Space Technology online with voice has been done with simple
teleconferencing lines - usually more than one. MaestroConference is
planning to add support for "Law of Two Feet" self-organizing - so people
can move themselves between breakout sessions. I don't think they've
completed it yet - but they have been actively working with our community to
make something to support online voice open space technology events.
http://maestroconference.com/

I think you could create an Open Space with multiple teleconference lines
and have people meet in one of them for the plenary - and then hang up and
move to other phone lines for the breakouts.
http://www.freeconferencing.com/ offers free telephone numbers for
teleconferences. They make their money because of a legal setup in the U.S.
that they get a portion of the local telephone company revenues of those who
call into their phone numbers. Christine Whitney Sanchez has done some of
the largest Open Space meetings with the Girl Scouts - and she told me she
used this multiple telephone conference line approach successfully.

There is also Skype and Google Hangout - I'm not sure how easily these would
scale and I'd rather not be involved in the logistics of setting something
like that up. I've personally found it touch and go just to hold a voice
conference with these free offerings - but with some luck and some savvy -
it could be done.

An attempt was made a few years ago to design an Open Space Technology
online using http://secondlife.com - the 3D world where people meet using
avatars with both text and voice. It has worked for World Cafe', but the
experiment never completed for OST. It felt like the technology overhead and
learning curve was too steep - though it could work.

I participated a few months ago with a very successful online Open Space for
just a few hours. It is a platform using voice, text, and shared graphics
through a website. There have been a few invitations to try this system. I
did it November 2012. The online event was hosted by the Genuine Contact
community that Birgitt Williams started - though I don't think it's
officially a part of Genuine Contact - they do bring some of that mature
understanding of Open Space. http://wisdomways.net.

Just to be complete - Harrison Owen has said the Internet is one big Open
Space. People are self-organizing meetups constantly all over the net.

    Harold

On 4/19/13 3:55 PM, B.MELIN ALIDADE wrote:

@james sounds interesting, I would very much like to know more, and even, to
participate on line..
I have never done this before, could be nice to think about it, (my Skype
bea0102)
Thanks, Béatrice Melin
Marseilles, South of France

De : oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] De la part de James Sheldon
Envoyé : vendredi 19 avril 2013 22:09
À : OSList at lists.openspacetech.org
Objet : [OSList] Entirely-online OSs?

Has anyone ever done an open space entirely online, like if participants are
not able to travel and be in person together?   I'm having trouble
envisioning what these might look like...
I've got a small organization of maybe a half dozen people but was thinking
we could issue an invite more broadly to people in our field.
~James

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-- 
Harold Shinsato
harold at shinsato.com
http://shinsato.com
twitter: @hajush <http://twitter.com/hajush> 
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