Kim Willing Wrote: Questions: What method will I use to do the prioritizing of those topics requiring immediate attention??
And, once hot topics are found, shall I ask for a champion to nominate for each before people break up into action groups or let each group decide (I am inclined to identify champions whilst still in large group, before action groups form). Would it be better to converge similar topics BEFORE prioritizing? The voting may be more meaningful this way - less spread out and more informative? I understand this would need to be a fairly quick, crude, intuitive process with this no. of people but it might help? Also, even if only 250 come to the Friday morning session, would it be unwieldy to use 15 dots each, and given that there may be many more topics than with a smaller group, I'm wondering whether it might be better to ask people to just list their top 10 (rather than 5) issues and to give 1 dot to each vs. ranking them. The counting of dots has to happen fairly quickly once the voting is done and I don't want to make it impossible. Kim -- When you have a large-ish group (which for me is anything over 100) I find that sticky dot get pretty cumbersome. I find the some for of electronic prioritizing is the only way to go. There is some software which I think Michael has put on www.openspaceworld.org which can do the job. Or if you have a friendly techie it is not hard to make a package. The details and mechanics (math) will be found in my book. As for converging topics BEFORE prioritizing, I would approach that with great caution. Folks get very attached to their topics, and take great offence when somehow they get "merged." Having said that there are also times when obviously the same issue was addressed in several sessions. My practice is to go to the several conveners and point out that if their sessions remain separate, they will essentially divide the vote. It would therefore make sense to have a single issue (pick one of the titles). I have never had anybody disagree. The one time I was party to a "forced merge" (done against my advice by the sponsor) we damn near had a revolution. Made it, but only by the grace of God -- and of course it was me -- and not the sponsors in the middle of the circle. As you might understand, there was a rather pointed conversation in the "debrief". I think I made my point. Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20845 Phone 301-365-2093 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kim Willing Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 1:45 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Dear OSLIST! It's been a while since I've been in touch! I am writing in a brief moment while both children (ie; the reasons why I haven't been in touch for a couple of years) are asleep as I am embarking on my first Open Space facilitation for this year in a couple of weeks. I must tell you some time about the other OS experiences I have had as I realise I have been awfully remiss in not contributing to the network and in hiding out somewhat - however - the immediate to begin - incase I have to leap up to a waking babe - The Scenario: A national conference - 350 delegates - 3 days traditional conferencing - papers etc incl one day field trips the day before we embark on 1.5 days OS facilitated by moi. (I expect the delegates will be tired, but those who are there will also be suffering some indigestion of info and keen to process it). As I have dared to do in the past (other stories here) we are doing one day workshops followed by half day (morning) convergence - which also serves as the last day of the conf. so people will be invited to relect on whole conf in closing circle. The purpose of the OS is to allow people to work with the issues that have emerged for them during the conf., to identify what's hot and to create a future out of it all. Re: convergence - In the past I have worked with up to 120 people and around 30 topics. I have given each person 15 sticky dots and asked them to allocate 5 dots to top priority, 4 to next etc down to 1. I think the converging of similar topics has happened later, in the action groups when people are asked to relate and record similar topics - People will have a photocopied report of all the workshops given to them when they arrive on Fri morning and after being given some time to read and digest this, I will invite them to PRIORITISE THE TOP 10? TOPICS (? not sure about this no.) and we will form action groups on those. Questions: What method will I use to do the prioritising of those topics requiring immediate attention?? And, once hot topics are found, shall I ask for a champion to nominate for each before people break up into action groups or let each group decide (I am inclined to identify champions whilst still in large group, before action groups form). Would it be better to converge similar topics BEFORE prioritising? The voting may be more meaningful this way - less spread out and more informative? I understand this would need to be a fairly quick, crude, intuitive process with this no. of people but it might help? Also, even if only 250 come to the Friday morning session, would it be unwieldy to use 15 dots each, and given that there may be many more topics than with a smaller group, I'm wondering whether it might be better to ask people to just list their top 10 (rather than 5) issues and to give 1 dot to each vs. ranking them. The counting of dots has to happen fairly quickly once the voting is done and I don't want to make it impossible. I look forward to hearing from those of you who have any thoughts on this. All the best and thanks, Kim Willing. * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
