[OSList] One thing less to do and other neat ideas from the field of experience and practice

[Juliane Martina Roell (Structure & Process)]

Michael M Pannwitz schrieb am 13.04.19 um 08:54:
> 
> --- the beginning times for the breakout sessions are fixed and there is 
> a longer break between those breakout sessions in the middle of the day 
> (I have not experimented without beginning times and am interested to 
> hear more details, stories with this approach)
> 
> Ok, come out of your lonely place and spread your learning (which, as 
> you might have heard, is a Law)


The first time I worked with an open (timeless, slot-less) schedule, we 
had about 40 participants and a space in which we could serve only 
snacks, but no larger food. (It was also the hottest day of that summer, 
40 Celsius in Frankfurt am Main!) But there were plenty of restaurants 
around and a market downstairs.

So we informed people at the beginning, that there was no planned "lunch 
break", and they could "break" any time (as it's open space) but that if 
they felt that they wanted to schedule some food intake systematically, 
they could.

Self-organisation took over, of course: some people just had lunch when 
they felt like it, some people scheduled issue-sessions-over-lunch ("my 
session will by on X and it will happen in the Y-restaurant"), some 
people just scheduled lunch ("I will go for sushi at 1pm - who wants to 
join?").

I remember being part of a group that went to a topic-less lunch 
together, and when after 90 minutes of glorious food and conversation we 
were clearly not done yet, but some people got nervous because other 
sessions were scheduled to start now, we realised that most of the 
people were around the table anyway and we could just expand time a good 
bit. Some of the afternoon sessions started 2 hours later than 
originally scheduled - and that was just fine.

TLDR: One might consider that a "lunch break" is just another type of 
session and leave it to the participants to organise it as they see fit.

Love,
Juliane.

-- 
Structure & Process  | http://structureprocess.com | @strucproc
Juliane Martina Röll | GSM: +49 178 4984743