Harrison Owen wrote: The use of visuals is great -- for it does add a whole new level to the communication. But every time I have used (or seen used) "facilitators" for the process, I have been less than impressed. If you have 30 concurrent groups, you will need 30 trained facilitators -- and good ones are very hard to come by. More to the point, the addition of facilitators for any purpose takes the process out of the hands of the participants -- and once again puts them in the role of recipients -- having things done to or for them. So not only does the addition of facilitators complicate the process (or at least your headaches in "managing" the process) it also, in my experience, impedes the process. beautiful to have this discussion forum! Dear Harrison, you don't need 30 visual facilitators for 30 groups! We made the experience, that within 10 to 15 minutes you can pick up the essentials of a group discussion, no matter wether you come in rather in the beginning or the end. We would not have dared to claim that - it is really a matter of experience! For example, we visualized a conference of 800 postmen in Berlin, and went to 36 concurrent groups one after the other, 10 minutes each (my god, that was really hard work!) - and we were only two persons! We showed the resulting pictures to the postmen afterwards asking if something was missing, and see, everybody was satisfied!
We too love people drawing themselves, and often help them doing so. But as it is in Open Space, they are concentrated on the item they choose, and too much drawing sometimes takes the concentration away from the discussion, and you can't expect pictures from all the groups. So we love to have both possibilities. You mention David Sibbet and his beautiful work. He and all of his partners, friends, followers in the US use the method of drawing on big wall papers, not especially appropriate for fast group discussions. We instead use small cards we carry with us, very easy to use in flexible situations. And we put these cards together afterwards, show them to the people and ask, whether we really understood them, and if someone wishes a change we do that immediately (the drawing of one card takes about 1 to 2 minutes!). So we hope to contribute to a growing cooperation of OpenSpace people and visual facilitators, without disturbing the participants, but serving them, with minimal organisational effort and maximal effectivity. Reinhard VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE Kuchenmueller & Dr. Stifel Munich Germany Tel: +49-89-202 447 48 http://www.visuelle-protokolle.de
