hi doug, two thoughts...
first, giles hopkins, who has done bunches of these meetings and i don't think is here on the list, told me at an osonos once that he had (at the time) 20 years experience and all kinds of tools and tricks in his bag, and that he always uses open space when he can because he always feels so clean afterward. so in a spin on your question, i guess i figure it went well if i walk away feeling clean. guess that makes the outcomes less important than the shared sense of responsibility and momentum that 'good' sessions/groups develop, so i have nothing pulling me to stay on, physically or otherwise. second, been thinking about the notion of evaluation, which came up some time ago here, and have noticed that the reason i don't like evaluations is that they mostly tend to imply a taking back of responsibility for the quality of folks experience in open space. even the ones that say "was the food okay?" forgets that there were six restaurants in the hotel and that all were accessible by two feet. while we acknowledged that sometimes evals are necessary/required, i think it's worth thinking about what we really want to evaluate and how those questions can be used to open the next spaces... in other words, how can we use the evaluation to ask folks to evaluate the work of the entire group and notice what more work, other topics, etc. that they think should be considered next by the group (thus implying more open space meetings, and continued responsibility of the whole group for continued progress)... instead of evaluating the work of the planning committee. the way i would explain this shift in format to potential clients is simply to point out that once we give them responisibility for their experience in the opening, the credit for whatever good happens is likely to be kept, while the blame for bad things is likely to be dumped back on the sponsors. not sure that it's perfectly true, but it seems reasonable enough to convince most would-be evaluators to broaden their approach. m "Douglas D. Germann, Sr." wrote: > > To m > > Which brings me to a question for all of you--how do you know when an OST has > gone well? > > I did not feel it appropriate to pass around an evaluation sheet to all the > participants. And I stayed out of the meetings (there aren't many coffee cups > to pick up after 8 people!). > -- Michael Herman 300 West North Avenue #1105 Chicago IL 60610 312-280-7838 voice 312-280-7837 fax http://www.michaelherman.com ...an invitation. * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
