Dear List, The other day I spoke with a prospective client who very much wants to organize Open Space and, very exciting for me, he wants me to facilitate. The thing is, this would be my first large Open Space and his description of what he wants leaves me with some questions in my mind that I could really use some advice on:
The background is that he is on the organizing committee for a European Conference on Quality Management. The conference itself is organized into 8 different interest areas. He is responsible for the organization of 1 of the interest areas (Education and Quality). Each interest area arranges the conference as they see fit and in the past this has usually meant that people present papers as lectures with short discussion groups after the lectures. In other words, quite traditionally. He wants to change this in his section, but in the rest of the conference he has no influence. People have been traditionally free to roam through and sit in on sessions in each interest area, but we have the option to say that people would have to participate for the whole time, (although this is completely new to this 47 year old organization). Anyhow, as I see it now, I have some questions: Have other people ever facilitated Open Space Meetings within the context of larger conferences where not everything was in Open Space (He said that there are usually about 800 people at this conference as a whole, and he thought about 100 could be expected for his interest area Am I crazy to do this as a first large OST event.) ? Should I do it at all? Do people have suggestions, can you let me know what the dangers are of doing something like this and what could be good ways to construct this? Thanks for your help. Sincerely, Doris Gottlieb
