Lucas - Sounds like a lot of fun. And I know on the basis of long experience, being an old Fed myself, that Feds are just like every other human being on the planet. When they first sit down in the circle they may think it is a little bit weird. However, if you will just go right ahead with the "Standard opening" - Welcome to Open Space as you walk the circle - move right to the reason for the gathering (We are here today to solve the problems of transparency) hit the four principles, one law, the admonition (prepare for surprises) - and if you keep all of that to 15-20 min they will be hard at work identifying their issues and never look back. Don't worry about making them feel comfortable - just open the space and get the folks working. After all that is why they came (I hope). Anything else is just a distraction, I think. Have fun!
Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Dr. Potomac, MD 20854 USA Phone 301-365-2093 www.openspaceworld.com www.ho-image.com (Personal Website) To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]: <http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html> http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html From: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Lucas Cioffi Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Balloons as an Ice Breaker Howdy All, Bottom line up front: How do you break the ice with participants unfamiliar to OS? Here's one way I found helpful: I recently facilitated an open space workshop for sixty participants from roughly two dozen federal agencies. The topic was how to make government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative as part of the Administration's Open <http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive> Government Directive. I'm a novice at OS, but I've learned a bunch from this list and I'm happy to offer an idea which may be helpful to others. OS can be intimidating, especially for government employees, so I opened with a collaborative exercise using balloons. The inspiration came from a landscape architect's presentation where he accented a landscape with huge balloon sculptures to give it a playful feel for adults. Rules of the Game: * Everyone gets 2 colored balloons in a sealed envelope. * There is a point system posted on the wall (Red = 5, Orange = 4, Yellow = 3, Green = 2, Blue = 1). * Collaboration through trading is heavily incentivized-- if someone ends up with a pair of balloons which are the same color, then their score is multiplied times three. This encourages people to mingle and create win-win scenarios. There are no restrictions on how balloons can be traded (for example trading 1 for 1, 2 for 1, or even 0 for 1). * Participants are given three minutes to inflate and trade their balloons. The goal is to have the most points. (An alternate goal could be to maximize the number of points for the entire group rather than individuals.) Reasons why we opened with a game: * Make it clear that this was a place where it's OK to be creative, unlike their standard government workplace * Prime the audience for the subject matter of collaboration (learn by doing) * Have some fun * Build a bit of community among the participants who were mostly strangers (incentivize mingling). * Create a shared experience. * Create a little chaos. * Jazz up the place visually with a few balloons (it needed some color) Reasons why we opened with this game for this workshop Thomas Jefferson had a saying that "He who receives ideas from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me." After the exercise I asked the participants what the difference was between trading a physical object (like a balloon) and sharing an idea; this exercise was lively and helped them understand that their purpose during the workshop was to share knowledge and benefit from others doing the same. Each month a different agency hosts this workshop for all the other agencies, and to keep the workshops fresh, our next opener will consist of small collaborative teams competing to build the tallest marshmallow-spaghetti tower (here's a fascinating TED video <http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower.html> which describes some stats behind this game). Any thoughts? Do you open with games or collaborative exercises that you would recommend? As always, thanks for the discussion! Lucas * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
