[OSList] Recording Open Space notes from phone or tablet

[Patrick Schley]

Hi Ilan –

My colleagues and I facilitate an Open Space event for our software users each year at our conference. We have as many as 1,000 people participating in the event with more than 150 discussion conveners.

We have found much success using a product called WebMerge (now Formstack Documents, I believe), which allows you to build a form for notes that are then saved as a standardized PDF document to a shared drive (we use Box but Dropbox or Google Drive integrations are available as well). This has worked really well – we then take the PDF’s and combine them into a master Book of Proceedings document which is distributed to our community. The form is simple:

·         Convener’s name and email

·         Scribe’s name and email (if applicable)

·         Session topic

·         Session date/time/circle

·         Names of participants

·         Session notes

An added benefit is we make fields available on the form where folks can upload pictures (e.g. a photo of a flipchart page from the discussion) that are then placed into the document automatically. We have actually strayed away from having people upload photos without first typing their notes, because we want the typed words in order to make the document more searchable. But if there is a drawing or something similar that needs to be captured then the image fields work great.

WebMerge is a paid product based on how many individual submissions you have, but we simply increase our plan for the month of the conference and then push it back down to a free plan for the rest of the year.

From a logistical standpoint, we publish a shortened URL to our attendees to encourage them to enter their notes. This URL is printed on the sheets of paper we leave in each discussion circle for note-taking, as well as on posters in the space. We still have laptops available in the News Room for people to type their notes in to the form right after their session, but we also allow them to take notes into the form “live” if they want, or take their written notes with them to submit later. We do a little bit of follow-up after the event and are usually able to publish proceedings within a month, with a majority of the sessions having at least some form of notes in the book.

Happy to answer any further questions about this.

Best,

-p.



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Patrick Schley
Support Escalation Specialist
Tessitura Network<http://tessituranetwork.com/>
+1 888 643 5778 x 486 office
+1 888 643 5778 x 201 customer care
pschley at tessituranetwork.com<mailto:pschley at tessituranetwork.com>
pronouns: he/him




From: OSList <oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org> On Behalf Of Ilan Kirschenbaum via OSList
Sent: Monday, January 6, 2020 10:21 AM
To: oslist at openspacetech.org
Cc: Ilan Kirschenbaum <ilan at practical-agile.com>
Subject: [OSList] Recording Open Space notes from phone or tablet

Hi OSLISTers,

Happy to join here, happy to find new friends as well as familiar names from the agile scene :-)
I am also a student on Tova Averbuch's program (joining the recent spike in posts 😊)

I am toying with the idea of having a simple Google form that will auto-generate an Open Space summary to a Google Doc.
The idea is to enable participants to record notes close to their session when information is fresh, using ubiquitous technology.

I would like to probe your brains on this idea:
1. Have you had experience with a similar tool? What should I be careful of when implementing such a tool?
e.g Is there a good reason *not* to use Google Docs?

2. The implementation works best with a G-suite account, which enables the use of Google Docs Templates (not available on a free gmail account).
Do you see this as a problem?
My concern is that G-suite requires a special paid account - do you think this will be an obstacle?

3. In my silly question category:
I am preparing a guide to use G-suite + Zappier for this.
From you experience, will a typical OST organizer have access to people with skills to follow a procedure with some techy requirements?

4. I am holding back on a zap to automatically prepare the OST book with table of contents, etc.
My hunch tells me that it is better to manually review the summaries before binding them, and anyway, not all participants will use this automated option. I wish to avoid making the impression that once implemented this option is a requirement.
Any thoughts on this?

5. Finally, what other aspects should I think of to make such a tool more useful for OST-ers?

Many thanks,
Ilan

--
Ilan Kirschenbaum - Co-Founder & Agile coach At Practical Agile LTD.
Twitter: @kirschi_
Phone # +972-54-6620348
website: www.practical-agile.com<http://www.practical-agile.com/>

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