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At 08:01 PM 6/12/2003 +0200, you wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">It
seems to me that 500, 1000 or 2000 people are simple different social
aggregats (seen under the view of a participative approach). There are
many experiences working with 500 or so, but not too many with 1000 (I
can only remember one in Germany) and no experiences with 2000 so far.
Open Space roots in selforganization of praticipants in in a minimal
structur. The key question is How large is the ability of people to
come along with the complexitiy that emerges in a crowd of
2000?</font></blockquote><br>
I really failed to see any difference in the coping capacity with the
group of 2000 and any other group I have ever worked with. <br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080"> To
handle the sheer mass of people, space and choices. (Remember: 150 meter
walk to see all the topics). My observation: many people found (their)
workshops, but I also observed many lost persons. To keep clear whats
going on under these circumstances can be a psychological and physical
challenge.</font></blockquote><br>
It is worse than that -- It is impossible. Which is why I never try. I do
sense the flow of energy, but in terms of being clear about what is going
on (especially in detail) -- no way -- especially when it is all in
German. Just gives me a bad headache. <br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080"> But
I know chaos is part of OS and however many people had good time, like
the pictures showed. And those, who felt uncomfortable found a way or
simple left. Did selforganization therfore
work?</font></blockquote><br>
I don't think it has too much to do with being comfortable or
uncomfortable, and certainly I feel no particular obligation to set them
at ease. As a matter of fact, acute discomfort is often the (essential)
precursor to genuine learning. But I wouldn't try to make them
uncomfortable either. In fact, I wouldn't try to MAKE them anything at
all. My objective is only to enable an environment in which people can be
fully themselves (or at least as fully as they care/dare to be). As for
self-organization, that "worked" I believe, because all of life
is self-organizing. True there are some folks who think they did the
organizing, but on a charitable day, I would call them deluded. We can
assist the process. We can detract from the process. But I don't think we
can change the process, and certainly we did not create the process. For
me the process of Open Space is the process of life, is the process of
self-organization. All one thing. <br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080"> We
do not know, because there were no exitpolls and there was no need to
deliever any outcomes. 150 written report sheets only proof: if
people find a meet a theme of very large broad and no givens and they are
stimulated in the right way, they are able to have a good time. But if
you think about work with the need of shared outcomes? There might be
limititations of complexity that raises up with the number of people,
where the work starts to be insufficient. Ecological systems usually have
a limit of growth where they break down immediately, if it is too much of
anything. Where is that limit and what kind of nutrient enviroment could
be helpful to support a really large group under this
conditions?</font></blockquote><br>
One basic truth in our world is that everything has a beginning, middle
and end. For us it is called birth, life, and death. This is true for
each one of us, and all of us together. One way or another, sometime or
other, there will arise a set of circumstances which overwhelm our
capacity to cope. But the strange thing is (at least to me) that we have
gotten along as well as we have -- and in fact are still here on planet
Earth complaining about how bad things have gotten. So yes, there are
limits. There are limits to everything. But I don't think we have even
come close to finding out what they are -- in Open Space, or in the great
ball game of Life. <br><br>
Harrison<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080"> </font></blockquote><br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">Delivery and
logistics<br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">An OST.meeting
in many cases is headed to delivery. This needs elements that were
missing in Würzhurg (there was no need for that). A really working
marketplace, the book, convergence and action planning. The practical
carry through of these procedures is in direct connection to the size of
a meeting.<br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">1. Working
sessions. I suppose the surprising huge number of workshops emerged for
two reasons: People where up on their own private passions. They did not
notice other ones with close contents and there was no need to. Just
walked in with their sheets. In a real working meeting people probably
attentive observe what's going on, to join in already convened workshops
or not to get into a competition of topics. This reduces the number of
workshops. And - if you work on a shared topic, there is probably a
limited number of topics that make sense - beyond the number of people
there.What does it mean? Let's say a meeting with 2000 people, 7 working
sessions, 150 topics, (Harrisons bet). It's 21 workshops each session and
nearly 100 people in every single session in the average. Hmm, I know
that 100 people can work together very well, but every group, at every
time?<br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">2.
Marketplace: It is possible to concentrate 230 topics at a linge that is
smaller than 150 meter, for sure. I can hardly believe that it is
possible to overview the stuff, if there are thousands around you, but
imagine the crowd dealing! I believe more to individual arbitrariness
than to negotiations. This does not matter if your only interest is to
find any workshops where you can probably have a good time. But if you
have high interest because you have passion for the whole thing? Any
ideas to handle that? <br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">3 Writing
reports: Handwritten reports work beautiful at many occassions, as I
know. But my experience is, that the quality of typed reports is much
higher. People spend more time to think it over and to bring in a form
that is understandable for people, who did not share the workshop. And
this makes it easier to work on with it. To type in 230 reports made in,
lets say 7 working sessions, makes something like 30 - 50 PCs, right? A
technical challenge, you need probably a technical tent too, but you can
make it. <br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">4. The book:
To copy 150 reports, even of one page each, is 300.000 copies, right? May
be you need a print office, but can make it. But how much time does the
crowd need to read the book before convergence? 2 hours minimum? Maybe a
little dizzy after?</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080">
<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">5.
Convergence: There is no need for convergence in a congress. In an
OSTmeeting: The voting software is very helpful. May be the easiest part,
if you have a lot of terminals to enter the votes. But it will take some
time and you need to have some clever ideas to make the result
visualized. It would be very helpful to merge topics to reduce the
number. I can only hardly imagine how it works with 2000.
Selforganization? Maybe.<br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">6 Action
planning: There is no use for the "Top 10" formula. It creates
groups of an average number of 200. "Top 30"? Still 65 each.
Any experiences of action planning groups of this size? Would an
"action space", like the Berlin guys do it, help (another
little OS for building planning groups)? Maybe no difference for the
numbers. At last the same question as at the first bullet: Is there a
limit of working ability of groups by numbers and if, where?<br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">I can imagine
that OS is a beautiful ingredient to a congress, by using some strong
elements of OS and dropping some others (being aware of this). But a
succesful application in a congress does not answer all questions we
have, doing an OS-meeting with 2000. <br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">And there is
one very hard disadvantage: In Würzburg 2000 people believed to have
learned to know what OS is really like, but they experienced only pieces
of all the huge possibilities, we know that OS can have. Good marketing?
Bad marketing? Who knows...<br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2 color="#800080"><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">Erich<br>
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<div align="center">Harrison Owen<br>
7808 River Falls Drive<br>
Potomac, MD 20854 USA<br>
phone 301-365-2093<br>
Open Space Training <a href="http://www.openspaceworld.com/" eudora="autourl">www.openspaceworld.com</a> <br>
Open Space Institute <a href="http://www.openspaceworld.org/" eudora="autourl">www.openspaceworld.org</a><br>
Personal website <a href="http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm" eudora="autourl"><font color="#0000FF">http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm</a><br><br>
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