[OSList] Online Open Space with more than 1000 people?

Fri Apr 22 13:49:05 PDT 2022

Pushed the button too soon. --sorry. I actually do have some thoughts for the online OS. Major one is that you take full advantage of the online environment. In terms of all the questions Lucas raised ... I think you are making it much too complicated. In a F-to-Face OS thought must be given the potential number of sessions to insure available meeting spaces and times. It turns out most estimates are too restrictive, as Michael and I discovered. We also discovered that time/space can expand very quickly with very little effort on our part -- which is a whole other story. However, time/space in cyberspace is infinite. So how to proceed? I would do the standard opening/invitation down to the point where participants are invited to announce their issues. In the F-to-Face world the announcements have to be done individually and sequentially. In the virtual environment, they can be done all at once. I would suggest creating a screen which is opened to all participants (1500) displaying available time slots (say 6 -- 1 hour periods over whatever days) and two statements to be filled in "My issue is" "My name is"
The time slot portion might work something like this: Each slot is programmed for a finite number of uses (say 50). When a participant clicks on a chosen time the number available in that slot is reduced by one and the participant's issues is assigned that time period. When the number available in that slot goes to zero the screen adjusts and that particular slot disappears. Given sufficient computing power all participants could work simultaneously. At the end of the announcement period the screen goes blank and returns with The Agenda. Sort of like a mini Amazon shopping spree for 1500 people. 
I surely could not do the programming, but I am quite certain it could be done. Have fun!
Harrison

-----Original Message-----
From: Harrison Owen via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
To: oslist at lists.openspacetech.org <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
Cc: Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net>
Sent: Fri, Apr 22, 2022 12:53 pm
Subject: Re: [OSList] Online Open Space with more than 1000 people?

Michael Pannwitz and I facilitated a gathering for 2108 German Psychiatrists. We did it straight by the book. We thought there might be 75 sessions. We were off by a bit. Ended up with 150+ We just kept passing out post-its and expanded the wall. We actually did it in a circus tent which was a little different. This was a one day gathering with proceedings for all upon departure. How you would do all that online -- I don't have a clue, but I am sure you guys are going to have fun figuring that all out. Good luck!
Harrison

-----Original Message-----
From: Lucas Cioffi via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
Cc: Lucas Cioffi <lucas at qiqochat.com>
Sent: Thu, Apr 21, 2022 2:16 pm
Subject: [OSList] Online Open Space with more than 1000 people?

Hi All,
Someone asked me for advice about hosting an online open space with 1500 people who work on child welfare.  They want to get the "whole system in the room", including government, professionals, families, etc.
I can see that there are at least two separate parts to this challenge: tech/software and facilitation.
1. Tech/Software: What technology decisions would you make to accommodate 1500, since the capacity of Zoom meetings is 1000?  I wrote up my thoughts on this part at the bottom of this email.
2. Facilitation: This is the main question that I have for colleagues on OSLIST.  What special design considerations would you have during an open space (online or not) with more than 1500 people?  Here are some questions that come to mind:   
   - How many sessions do you think people will propose if this is a 1-day, 6 hour event with 3-4 rounds of discussion sessions?  I searched OSLIST and found this from Harrison in 2016: "Rule of thumb... for all these years.... 5 break our rooms/spaces per 100 participants. For smaller groups (+- 50) a large room with nooks usually works better. I’ve had groups of 25 with 4-5 groups working at the same time."  So that would mean 50 spaces, therefore up to 150 sessions, but I would expect that the rule of thumb acts more as a maximum as groups get larger, because there's probably a lot of duplicate topics as groups get larger.   

   - If there are 150 sessions proposed, do you give everyone a chance to speak their session to the large group or just view the list of sessions?  If everyone had just 15 seconds then that would be 38 minutes of just listening to session topics.  Ahh!!
   - How do you make it easy for participants to merge their sessions together?  I guess they could ask to move to a Zoom breakout room and we could pair them off for a moment, or they could connect with each other in chat -- that seems practical.
My thoughts on tech options are below.Any other thoughts that you have?  Thank you!  

Lucas Cioffi

QiqoChat | Lead Software Engineer

lucas at qiqochat.com

+1.917.528.1831

Live Online Events | Engaging Communities | Real Collaboration

Drop in for open office hours!

Options for handling more than 1000 people in Zoom + QiqoQiqo has a max capacity of 2500, and Zoom has a max capacity of 1000 interactive participants in a single meeting.  There are several solid options for increasing the event size above 1000 people.
Option 1: We can connect two 1000-person Zoom meetings together, where the second room is an overflow room.  The people in the overflow room can hear what is going on in the first room and can speak & use the chat with each other but they cannot speak & use the chat in the first room.  (The technical way this happens is that a second facilitator joins the overflow room from their Zoom app, then they join the first Zoom meeting through their Web browser Chrome/Firefox/Safari/etc and then they screenshare that into the overflow Zoom meeting).  The facilitator in the first room can be the voice for people in the overflow room and can speak into the first room what is happening in the chat of the overflow room (if they have the overflow meeting open in their browser.  You can have up to 1000 other people with this option.  We will add to our staff a skilled moderator for the overflow room so that people there feel engaged and not that they are passively watching and left out.  You can also add the livestream in option 2 (below) to this option so people can choose from the main Zoom, overflow Zoom, and the livestream.
Option 2: We can livestream from the 1000-person Zoom meeting into QiqoChat so that anyone who joins after the meeting reaches capacity will be able to see the livestream from the same page where they are.  We have several options where everyone can be in the same chat (outside of Zoom) or we can use the regular chat inside of Zoom for the main room and have an overflow chat for everyone watching the livestream.  You can have up to 1500 other people with this option.
Option 3: Today we requested that Zoom increases the max capacity of their meetings to 2000 people.  They have never done that for any customer as far as we know, however we have several months and they may be able to make this happen.
Option 4: We could use a Zoom webinar (and make each speaker a panelist for a minute) instead of a Zoom meeting but then people wouldn't see everyone in the room.  _______________________________________________
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