Dear friends Today I had it confirmed. Wow! Every second year there is a big gathering here in Sweden where municipal school managers and politicians from all over the country meet to learn, exchange experiences and for networking - kind of. So far it has been quite traditional meetings - lectures, panels, some workshops etc. In the evaluation from last years event there was an interest for more interactive meetings and "Open Space" was mentioned.
So far I haven´t fully agreed that we´ll use OST but I sure would like to give them an experience of the power of OST. I do know there is a risk involved as we can only have 3,5 hours for this! I am very tempted and think we will use OST, the option I have presented is Worldcafé which I have used with almost as large groups as this one in even less time, a few times. But I love OST, so I´ll see if we can find a good way... I usually explain that halfday-OST, from my point of view, can be used to create space for a creative exchange of experiences - no more. If there is a very well defined issue some more concrete results could be possible, but it´s difficult with a diverse group of this size. The purpose of the big meeting as it seems today is to find ways how the school managers can support the strategic (political) desicionmaking regarding the development of the schoolsystem in their different municipalities (unfortunately the politicians will have meetings in their respective parties that half day, so they won´t take part). I am already thinking of ways to do follow up (which we will plan in the pre-meeting) and thought there might be some ideas and/or experiences out there? I already mentioned that we could invite local groups to meet to discuss further about the local issues. I also mentioned possibilities of further physical meetings and/or OpenSpace-Online(R) as ways to follow up on broader issues. I can´t see possibilities right now to spend time to prioritize on the issues during the short OST-meeting but thought maybe there could be a way to gather votes either before people leave (the have lunch+another couple of hours speeches after OST) or ask them to send their votes via email. This depends of course on what focus we choose, but could be valuable information. So, next step is a 4 hour Whole person process facilitated preparation meeting this coming January. I will let you know what happens then. Any experiences and/or ideas are welcome meanwhile. Kind regards Thomas Herrmann Phone +46 (0)709-98 97 81 Open Space Consulting Fax +46 (0)300-713 89 Pensévägen 4 434 46 Kungsbacka, Sweden Email: tho...@openspaceconsulting.com www.openspaceconsulting.com * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
