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At 11:48 AM 5/7/2003 +0200,
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080">Erich from lovely Vienna</font>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite> <br>
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080">And all questions come along with the complexity, which is created by the huge number of people </font><br>
<br>
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080">Here are some of them:</font><br>
<br>
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080">* There was no need for a marketplace with real dealing. Imagine a bulletin line with 230 topics on, of approximately 200m lenght in three sections (one for each working session) along three walls. Quiet a work only to walk it up. It' s ok, if you are only looking for a nice party to talk, but if you want to overview a lot of topics of serious meaning for the system, it is not that easy. And how to make deals within this distances?</font></blockquote><br>
the interest thing to me was that in spite of the distances involved -- deals were done. I noted a number of topics that were combined (several sheets together in a single space). In addition, the original 236 issues resulted in 150 reports. Some of this attrition was due, I am sure, to people simply not writing reports. but that relates to passion (or lack of same). It also relates to combinations of issues. I have no idea what the ratio was between these two, but that both were present, I have no doubt. To understand what happened, given the size of the group and the amount of space to be covered, I can only appeal to what I know about self-organizing systems. They are massively parallel (redundant) which in many ways zeros out the effect of increased numbers of people and space involved. When everything is happening all at once, it makes less difference how many people and how much space. On the other hand, with a linear (serial) system -- the more people and space, the more time required.<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite> <font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080">* Mass psychology and time structure: At one hand people need more time to keep orientated what's going - and doing all the marches (Hard work for bumblebees). This means, you need some extratime between the timeslots of the working sessions. At the other hand someone can feel damned lonesome, if your are lost in a crowd of 2000 and there is nothing really going on. At the end of a congress people may avoid unpleasuring feelings simple by leaving (and many dropped off). I don't have any ideas how to handle that at the moment, but may be it is not a problem at all. </font></blockquote><br>
It is true that there were fewer people at the end (perhaps 1000 as opposed to the original 2000). However, the drop in numbers was, if anything much less than I have often experienced in 3-4 day conferences of a traditional sort. My question would be, why did so many stay? It is very subjective to be sure, but my sense was that the energy and spirit at the end was certainly equal to, or better than, the beginning. As to why folks left, i would guess that there were two major factors. 1) Planes to catch and Trains to ride. 2) By the luck of the draw, many people found that the sessions they wanted to attend happened in the first two periods, so there was less incentive to stick around. Doubtless there were a few malcontents for whom Open Space is not their cup of tea. That always happens, and I am not sure there is too much to be done about it. Such people also seem to expect that somebody is going to tell them what to do and will complain when that does not happen. Fortunately for them, there always seem to be a number of "experts" who are willing to do the "telling," but speaking strictly for myself, I find that living my life by other people's rules puts a real kink in my passion -- and for sure absolves me of whatever responsibility I might have.<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"> * Reports: Michaels way of giving out report sheets for handwriting on a clipboard to every group worked very well. But if you want to support 60 people each working session to write reports in an IT-system, you need a lot of technical stuff. And it needs a lot of reading time, too.</font></blockquote><br>
A little help from IT would be good. But wen working with slightly smaller groups (1000-1500) I found the necessary support quite easy to provide. The major difficulty I have found is that the IT folks work too hard, and produce a system that is too complicated. There is a wonderful story of an Open Space for 1200 Microsoft folks -- OS worked as usual, but the whole IT system went down. Apparently it was a monster of interconnectedness, and when one part failed, the whole thing cascaded to an inglorious end. I have never had anything like that happen, but then again I always look for the simplest way.<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite> <font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080">* There was no need for a convergence. Folks conveined to topics of there passions (and some of them where really strange) and everybody participating in a session, picked out experiences for his own individual benefit. But how to converge 180 reports in a appropriate way? Maybe we need adapted structuring ideas for procedures. Not to mention the masses of paper to copy the book (round 400.000 sheets). The electronic voting system helps a lot, anyway you need a huge technical supply.</font></blockquote><br>
My experience -- prioritization and convergence with a group this size and 150 reports is not much of a problem. It does require time (as in at least a day and a half, and preferably two). And for sure computer based "balloting" is essential. In a word Sticky-dots won't do it. Needless-to-say, I have never worked with 2000 before, but I have worked a number of times with groups close to 1000 and a similar number of issues. No problem. <br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite> <font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080">It was a great event and at the same time it opens up an enormous field of new learnings and experiences needed. Let's do it..</font></blockquote><br>
I say YES to that!<br><br>
Harrison<br><br>
Harrison Owen<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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