Hi Terry, I did a large OS meeting this summer, about 700 to start with but about 300 that really participated. This was because it was an annual meeting and 700 always come and they were invited to take part but some choose to do other things, like the Law of two feet.
We had to think a lot about the logistics. The fire captain said we were not allowed to have loose chairs on the floor and we had to have wide corridors out of the circle in case of fire. So we had to connect the chairs and that made the circle more square like. The process still worked because when I opened the space I went round in a circle and talked about the circle and I think they had the feeling of a circle. We had the opening in a sports arena and also used the stands for people to sit on instead of chairs and it still worked. The break-out spaces were created in the class rooms in a school next door. We did not use computers and did not do any action planning so I don´t know how that would have worked. We had two cafées in the school and one in the sports arena and that worked. People went there and fetched what they wanted when they wanted it. I could have done one more thing about the closing circle, there were still more chairs left than those who participated which meant people spread out and I had to walk the microphone round the circle, still it worked but if I do this another time I think I will try to estimate how many are really participating and coming to the closing and how many that were only there of curiousness in the start. I suppose I have forgot many things but I suppose there are many more people out there with the experience. Also if you ask specific questions, I try to answer them. And then, as my friends told me, Go on and just do it the way you always do it. Eiwor Backelund * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
