[OSList] technology mix no-no?

[Harrison Owen]

Like Lisa I'll leave the techie stuff to the techies. Regarding OST... If
you have a Real Business Issue that people really care about, lots of
complexity, diversity of opinion, plenty of passion and conflict, along with
a real sense of urgency that something happen... OST is primed and Ready to
go with groups of 1 to ???  The facilitator really is inconsequential.
Actually with a small group (which you have) I have simply invited everybody
to choose a part in the Opening and it all worked perfect.

 

Harrison

 

Harrison Owen

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Phone 301-365-2093

(summer)  207-763-3261

 

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From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Magdalena
Valderrama Hurwitz
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 12:51 PM
To: oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
Subject: [OSList] technology mix no-no?

 

For the past year, I've been chairing a group of 13 people all living far
from each other (Missouri, California, Toronto, East Coast, Hawaii etc) who
have been meeting nearly weekly over the past 4 years over the phone and
with the intermittent help of private online chats and video calling when
these resources were available.  One of our tasks is to mobilize a community
of interest--about 1200 people scattered all over the world--to engage in
various cooperative actions. Now it's time for the annual working retreat
(last weekend in Sept) which the group has expanded from 2 into 2-1/2 days
(3 nights) so we can have more working time together.  It's normal for our
working retreats that people who can't attend in person call in and we work
to make sure "calling in" is an unavoidable option. 

 

The group has voted to use OST. A couple of years ago a member of the group
introduced OST and later left, and I became empathetic to the point of
taking a training, joining this listserve, and trying out one of the
Blackboard Collaborate gatherings (clunky but interesting)  etc.  Two of our
members are very eager to use OST for this retreat, and the rest are very
interested, with one abstention. I recused myself from the vote but after
the group voted yes, I contacted the former member and she is willing to
facilitate.

 

We figured out we could use a projector and Google Docs to post the OST
agenda wall, and we are also using Google Docs for the breakout session
reports. We plan to have the callers use Skype for the main sessions as well
as the breakout sessions so that we all have visual contact with each other.


 

We had a majority coming in person, but the two strongest proponents have
said they won't be able to come, one participant is personally uncomfortable
with the facilitator, etc, and now we are down to 6 people in the room and 5
sure callers. 

 

We're a pretty determined bunch of people--not energetic necessarily--and
OST is best done in person, so should we just give up on using OST now or is
there still hope to be had? 

 

-- 

 

Magdalena Valderrama Hurwitz

 

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