[OSList] Case study: election forum self org and Q&A

[John Baxter via OSList]

I hosted and co-organised a local government election forum over the
weekend.

I probably can't say I used OST, but we did have an open space that
leveraged self org.

The main lessons in self org were that the open space worked a charm
despite our atypical way of doing it, with the one reservation being that
the candidates tended to chat among themselves during the discussions
(details below...).

How it worked:

   1. - start in circle
   2. - people offer topics they want to get on the agenda (it was small
   and short, we had no grid and no designated spaces; everybody wrote their
   topic on a piece of paper, and then shared that with the group)
   3. - open space
   4. [*we shifted from the cafe into an auditorium for the last half - see
   photo at the end of this message*]
   5. - report back from discussion leaders (only)
   6. - voting process: as people reported back they stuck their original
   agenda topics on the wall; we voted by drawing circles on ones we liked (no
   further rules or instruction were necessary)
   7. - we elected the top three issue proposers as our representatives for
   the day
   8. - each candidate had 3 minutes to respond to the group's priorities
   overall (however they wanted - each of them focused on the 3 points)
   9. - our elected representatives-for-the-day had an open 4 minute window
   to follow up by grilling the candidates


Background:

   - This was in the CBD sub-region of a capital city council.
   - We had 5 mayoral candidates and 6 sub-region candidates with formal
   roles.  We had a further 5 candidates from other areas who were just
   participants.
   - We had about 20 non-candidate participants.
   - Voting is not compulsory, and I think total votes are in the order of
   6,000 (30% turnout), which I think includes businesses and land-owners.
   These figures may be wrong, but either way yes, these are definitely very
   small for urban government!  Being the capital city council it has a budget
   of a good few hundred million, but the population base is very small.


Other take-aways at the event level:

   - - dubbing the open space an "ideas market" worked for participants on
   the day and in prior explanation for promotion
   - - using open space preceding a candidates' Q&A worked quite well...
   people didn't really understand what was going to happen until they did it,
   but the logic and flow was clear enough.  Conversations were productive,
   and we generated really solid outputs (especially with the voting process)
   in quite a short period of time.
   - - it didn't matter that we didn't have time slots, dedicated spaces or
   even a grid
   - - it didn't matter that we didn't meet the ideal conditions for OST;
   the main problem (as per blog post linked below) was attracting people to
   the event.  Once there, the flow-on from the open space to the Q&A was
   clear enough, and the desire to engage was strong enough, so people jumped
   to it with gusto
   - - having an open and unmoderated window for the final grilling didn't
   work.  It was unreasonable to expect participant-representatives to
   effectively self-moderate in such a short window (with 11 candidates).
   This should have been more structured, and I shouldn't have left them in
   the lurch.

A final comment, we did not resolve the us vs them divide; election
candidates hung around with themselves, and the other participants talked
among themselves.  Fortunately, a few of the candidates joined in on
discussions, and a few of the participants made a point of approaching
candidates.  But it would have been much more productive to have shared
discussions (which would have been easier with a better participant
ration), mostly because the candidates generally had a good idea of how
council worked and had a lot of value to offer, especially those seeking
re-election.

My main interest in the experiment was the 'civic' side of things and I've
blogged about that here <http://www.cocreateadl.com/localgov/lessons/>.

[image: Inline image 1]
​

*John Baxter*
*​Co​Create Adelaide Facilitator, Director of Realise consultancy*
CoCreateADL.com​ <http://cocreateadl.com/localgov%E2%80%8B> |
jsbaxter.com.au <http://www.jsbaxter.com.au/>
0405 447 829
​ | ​
@jsbaxter_ <http://twitter.com/jsbaxter_>
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