Here’s a great story from MashUp Camp on how an Open Space Technology unconference worked. The article concludes with this quote:
‘The amazing thing about these camps, using open space methodology, is they shouldn’t work,’ said Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, which makes social software for collaboration. ‘Like a wiki, it turns out that some very simple and open rules have shockingly positive results–because people, on the whole, are good. Open events like these have become almost commonplace in the Valley. In fact, I’d say they are a key driver for the current wave of innovation. One part wiki, one part space and two parts people, add water, and voila!’
Tags: openspacetech, openspace, facilitation, unconference
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Michael Herman and I are pleased to announce a three day Open Space Technology practice retreat to cultivate the essense of Open Space leadership April 18-20 here on Bowen Island. This is an intensive retreat for leaders, managers, facilitators, consultants, community activists, and anyone else who wants to open more space for renewal, visioning, learning and productivity — in business, government, educational and community organizations. This is an opportunity for deep learning about leadership and change, in the context of the practices that support facilitating Open Space.
If you would like to register, or for more information, visit the Practice Retreat page or contact me directly.
Technorati Tags: openspacetech, facilitation
Okay folks…having read Jeff Jarvis today (thanks for the pointer Johnnie) and noting the unconferencing angst going on out there, and noting also that people seems to be feeling around in the dark for some way forward, I’m here to offer what I can.
I am a facilitator and I specialize in Open Space Technology. There is hardly a better method of structuring a conference that mimics the social networking landscape that we call the Internet. I have run all kinds of conferences with Open Space, including using Open Space combined with speakers and other bits of inspiration. I’ve used Open Space in combination with other large group process like World Cafe. I’ve convened conference using Open Space that were supported by wikis and blogs and that had an online and real life for months afterwards.
If you are after building bottom-up, conversational and highly networked conference, it’s really a very simple thing to turn a traditional conference into an Open Space event that gives you what you’re looking for. I have been hearing about people wanting to do this for a couple of years now, but no one has called yet, so here’s the offer:
If you are serious about wanting to create an unconference, phone me or Skype me or drop me an email and I will talk your ear off for free and tell you everything I know about how to do it. I will even help you create the invitation and figure out the logistics. If it suits you to work with me after that, I’ll facilitate the conference for you as well and/or find others out in the world who will be eager to help you out for an obscenely reasonable rate. You will have, at the end of the day, a dynamic event, with engaged participants and you will bring it in at a huge cost savings over what you are budgeting for a full-on conference with panels and video conferencing and skirts on the tables and such. You will have a powerful, low cost, learning event.
In exchange for my free set up advice, I’ll ask you to share what we learn with others on our respective blogs. All I want to do at this point is make sure that the new kind of conferencing takes off and that we can learn from one another.
So I look forward to hearing from you.
Today a post by Peter Buys on the OSLIST caught my eye…
I am fully convinced that Open Space is a marvelous tool to stimulate individual creativity; spontaneous collaboration (for the duration of the Open Space event); and an expression of trust in people by the client (in other words the ones who bought / decided for the Open Space event)…Many if not most Open Spaces are only very short blips (events) in typically much longer processes of change. But the Open Space does not really address that issue nor does it really offer (as far as I know) options on how to proceed beyond the time-bound Open Space event.
I am not a professional facilitator of short term events, in the sense that I only live of assignments for such one time events. Rather I work as a facilitator of long term processes in a specific sector (since 8 years the water sector). When dealing with long term processes of change, as a facilitator, one is obliged (I feel) to think beyond one time events and
rather constantly look for options and ‘most appropriate’ facilitation methods and tools for specific phases or steps in such processes. That means that one time Open Space may seem adequate, another time it can be one of the many other methods, tools, instruments that are at the disposal of a facilitator….
At times, I must admit, I feel ‘professional facilitators’ of one-off events (like an Open Space event) think fairly lightly about what will happen next and what kind of facilitation may be appropriate. It is not in their terms of reference, so why bother. Do I see this correctly?
I agree. Organizations and communities have a life long before an event and a life long after the event. One event does not create change.
As an OST facilitator I spend easily 75% of my time with a client preparing the ground for an Open Space event and getting very clear about how action is to be supported. The process is not magic…what makes it sustainable is the practice before, during and after the event. If a leader can work with participants and members of the organization or community to develop practices that support Open Space, then the results that one experiences in an event such as emergent leadership, passion and responsibility, deep engagement and so on, can be supported moving forward. It is then that the people in the organization become learners of practice and practitioners of their learning.
Open Space is powerful often because it challenges traditional notions of control, management and leadership. People get excited because they see what happens when we do things a little differently. But with no sense of how all of this gets grounded into the life of the organization and community, there is no harvest of the benefits, and no tendency towards change.
Michael Herman and I have called this part of working in Open Space “Grounding” and that represents a whole set of practices that is about supporting action, aligning work with the natural flow of work in the organization, and making it all real – “getting it out of the room with integrity.”
Grounding practices complement the other practices we teach and write about: Opening, Inviting and Holding. Without grounding, the work stays in the ether.
I think this is true, by the way, of any short term intervention aimed at facilitating “change” in the organization. Working with leaders and participants in Open Space needs good coaching and needs facilitation that not only opens and holds space but, in the words of the International Association of Facilitators, teaches new ways of thinking. It is for this reason that I believe we facilitators have to align our use of Open Space as a process with the practices that we also live in our life. If we view OS (or any process) as simply a tool without being in ncomplete alignment with it, then it doesn’t provide the fullest possible potential ground for work.
I am not an advocate of using OST for everything. I am a strong advocate of using OST where leadership is willing to practice opening and invitatation, where they hold and trust people and have a stroing sense of how the work can be grounded. If we have those conditions and we have urgency, passion, complexity and diversity, then we can play marvellously, everytime, with results that last.
Here’s a report on an OST meeting that I did on the weekend for a really interesting project which got youth to monitor violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the city of Vancouver.
The project was the brainchild of a number of organizations in the Vancouver, who came together to ask about how the UN convention could be used to draw attention to some of the pressing issues faced by children and youth in Vancouver. These issues included experiences in the child welfare system, poverty, lack of equitably funded education opportunities in poor neighbourhoods, safety and treatment by police, transit security and others in power.
The project lasted over two months during which youth facilitators working with a team at the City of Vancouver set out to hold focus groups to educate youth about the Convention, and to gather information from youth themselves on rights violations. More than that though, the youth were also invited to create visions for the future and for the society that they wanted to see, and these visions were harvested through words and pictures.
All of this work through local neighbourhood organizations culminated this past Friday and Saturday. Thirty-five youth gathered on Friday, to meet one another, build community and most importantly, reflect on their experience in the process and create a performance piece that would express a summary of what the project had learned. The performance itself involved the construction of a mural, some spoken word and rap, music and playback theatre. Parts of the performance were in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew and Russian.
Saturday morning, leaders from various levels of government and organizations were invited to join the youth in Open Space to figure out where to go forward. The project was officially over on the Saturday, and so we wanted to create a space in which the messages would get sent and an invitation made from the youth to the adults to work together to keep alive the spirit of what was happening. Fifty-five people gathered Saturday morning, and the youth did their performance which kicked off a short and intense Open Space. There was some significant power in the room, including two Members of the Provincial Legislative Assembly one of whom is the the provincial child welfare critic. Topics raised included what to do to help youth live independently and in safe conditions, stopping police harassment of Aboriginal and Latino youth by working with the police, and educating youth and adults on rights. All of the groups were composed of both youth and adults and the feeling in the room was one of possibility and optimism, despite the huge nature of some of the changes that were being discussed. To have provincial politicians sitting in the room with street youth, working together to move forward the learnings from the project was a powerful experience.
Increasingly I am seeing the possibility involved in bringing creative expression into play with youth working in Open Space. I know there have been many conversations about playback theatre in the Open Space community over the years, but, being a little slow on the uptake sometimes, I’m just now beginning to see how it integrates with OST work. The creative pieces, and the process of creating something together, is another practice ground for passion bounded by responsibility, and youth find their voices in many different ways when they are invited to work together to create art which is used as an invitation for action. There are a number of places in which I think this can be a significant combination and I’ll be looking for opportunities like this over the next little while. In the meantime, if you have had experience combining youth, creativity and Open Space together, let me know so I can continue to expand my horizons on this a little bit.