Dear Harrison and Michael, On my recent visit to Germany to have the privilege of working with two groups of people learning how to work with Open Space Technology and the Conscious Open Space Organization, your 2108 person OST meeting was, as anticipated, a subject of great interest in the groups. Fortunately we had the blessing of having Erich Kolenaty amongst us for the one group and he treated us to the slide show of the event. This was of course excellent, and made even more interesting by Erich's comments so that we could understand the event a little more from the "design" perspective.
The group raised a number of questions that we hope we can do some learning from you about. 1. The next time, would you have had participants announce their topics or would you have left the announcing part out? What happened to the energy when this part took so long (about two hours?)? 2. The next time, would you limit the number of topics as you did this time. Your agenda wall with its very clear organization for topics was interesting but it is my understanding that you planned for 160 topics but many more were generated and there was no planned way to deal with them. It didn't look like the agenda wall left any room for the "unplanned". And yet, maybe limiting the topics was necessary. 3. The next time, would you have used cushions on the floor as you did to accomodate the number of people. We thought that there was probably a lot of discomfort esp when we became aware of how long people had to be in their seats for the agenda building. 4. The handwritten reports and then enlarged by photocopying for posting seemed to work. Do you recommend this to others? Any glitches? How was the actual book of proceedings created? 5. Could one of you have facilitated this meeting on your own or did it really require the two of you to "open" and then "hold" the space. What was your reflection about it being so much male energy in the facilitation--two men opening the space instead of one male and one female? Did you feel that sharing the opening of the space was a positive effect on your own energy or did co-facilitating deflect some of your energy to your partner? 6. What is the real advantage in a large OST meeting such as this one? What was accomplished that could be cited as tangible results? Would it have been better to break the large group into smaller ie:600 person simultaneous OST meetings? Would that have been better for the participants. We noted in the pictures that some of the breakout groups had hundreds of participants and we were imagining that it would not be very fulfilling---but Erich pointed out that likely these in fact were like classes continuing on with masters from the "constellation work" so they were not meant to be really interactive. 7. In what circumstances would you recommend such a large OST meeting and what could the client expect to achieve? Well, that is it for the questions that I said that I would bring to you, Thanks for helping us with understanding this better. Again, we think it is a very valuable teaching story. Blessings, Birgitt -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Erich Kolenaty Sent: Monday, May 12, 2003 4:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: AW: 2108 -- Remember the Number Hi all! Harrison wrote There is never a point to making people uncomfortable. And for sure if the resources (chairs, flip charts etc) are available, certainly they should be used. But as you noted above -- very little of all that is essential. My questions are always -- What is possible? and What is appropriate ? And I know from long experience (sorry for the "elder" statement) that the people will not only survive -- but thrive. There is another consideration: The more you do for somebody, the less they have to do for themselves. I am by no means advocating being hard-nosed and nasty, but I have often noted that adversity is often the mother of invention. Adversity can even heighten and sharpen the experience. And here we are close together again: It is very important to be aware what is really essential. To know what to to keep carrefully in, anyway. Würzburg for example showed, that it is not esssential to provide chairs for this kind of folks. My philosophie from my work as trainer-trainer always was "Never do, what people can do by themselves". Sounds a little bit like your formula, isn't it? But we know, that one of the conditions of self-organization is a "nutrient enviroment". And here we come again to the question what is possible and appropriate in a certain context. For sure it would not been appropriate to skip, for example, the catering supply for 2108, though in my opinion catering is not essential to Open Space. People would have survived one day without food easily, maybe a little uncomfortable, but would have survived. So what is appropriate? It is appropriate to leave the comfortzone and bring in challenges to stimulate people to move by themselves. But I would not support a philosophy of slimming down to nothing, without looking at the circumstances Erich * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.488 / Virus Database: 287 - Release Date: 6/5/2003 * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
