At 11:18 PM 6/7/00 -0400, Romy wrote: >A VERY LITTLE CASE STUDY: using Open Space in a ONE hour meeting - >(Harrison you might be horrified.! - I hope not) ********************************** Absolutely NOT horrified. My personal practice of going for longer Open Spaces relates to 2 factors. First is the complexity/conflict of the issues. Given a lot of both, a "mini-Open Space" ends up being frustrating at best and may be counter-productive. The second factor is the experience level of the group. When Open Space becomes a common experience, I have seen the space effectively opened in 20 min -- from start to finish. There seems to be a natural progresssion from Open Space Event to OS mentality -- to OS organization. When a group of folks start to move along this progression it is as if (as you suggest) they never leave Open Space. So the short versions come as "intnentional focusing of the space already open" as opposed to something brand new.
In short Open Spaces with an experieinced group, the words of the opening become infinitely less important than the "ritual" -- and the most powerful element here, I think, is the circle. I have seen groups simply sit in the circle and go imediately from silence to posting of issues to the market place and on to the discussion groups in 5 min flat. Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, MD 20854 USA phone 301-469-9269 fax 301-983-9314 website www.mindspring.com/~owenhh Open Space Institute websites www.openspaceworld.org
