Thanks, Melinda! I look forward to the reports. :-)
Diana
Diana Larsen
www.futureworksconsulting.com
503-288-3550
Watch for:
"Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great" by Esther Derby &
Diana Larsen, available Summer 2006! Published by Pragmatic Bookshelf
(new title!)
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/dlret/index.html
On Jun 29, 2006, at 11:04 AM, Melinda Salazar wrote:
Dear Diana,
Ah, a very familiar scenerio and one in which we, two teachers who
collaborate on an annual Teaching Peace conference for educators,
parents, and community folk, struggled with this year. Our first
conference offered the un-Open Space/traditional conference format
with compelling keynotes (published, renowned academics) and a 5
strand breakout workshops, also presented by academics, educators
and community members. We provided a conference line-up not to be
missed (tee-shirts and all!). We drew a little over one hundred
participants, including students, teachers and community activists,
as well as the (left-leaning) filmmakers who used the ocnference to
'get up-close and personal' with anti-war scholars.
After experiencing Open Space at a Baha'i environmental conference
with Steve Cochran (US Partnership of the UN Decade for Education
for Sustainable Development), I convinced my conference
collaborator to try Open Space the following year. Long story
short, the OS conference was equally successful with a smaller
attendance due to, we believe, a challenging date vs. conference
format. The biggest difference between the two conferences was: 1)
no matter what we did, we could NOT get the academics to attend,
which is interesting in an of itself in terms of our (I also wear
an academic hat) retention and promotion conference activity as
well as a gap of OS in higher ed settings, and 2) attracting
participants without the 'line-up.'
We tried a version of your proposed plan, which I've come to learn
from this list as a functional transitional strategy. We invited
key individuals to host an OS session and had to work hard to
convey OS concepts to these individuals over and over: you are not
presenting a paper, or facilitating a workshop, rather you are kick
starting a conversation about..... This approach was successful
for some and not for others. We did provide a Marketplace space
where these selected indivuals, as well as others, could set up a
table, etc. and worked Marketplace time into the conference.
Can you read more about our OS Teaching Peace conference on our
website? Not yet! Have I done anything with the OS reports? Not
yet! Hopefully, over the summer.....so I appreciate this
opportunity to revisit our 1st OS conference.
Warmly,
Melinda
Melinda Salazar, Ph.D
University of New Hampshire
Women's Studies
Oyster River High School
Social Studies Department
603.682.4525
Quoting Diana Larsen <dlar...@futureworksconsulting.com>:
Hello all,
I'm working with two or three conference planning groups who want
to hold conferences completely in Open Space next year. They all
have a little concern about whether they can attract the kind of
participation they'd like without well-known KeyNote or Invited
Speakers - the folks whose presence justifies the participants'
attendance to bosses, etc.
One planning group came up with the idea of inviting Key
Personalities and offering them honoraria and help with travel
expenses as if it were a regular conference - but asking them /
not/ to give keynote speeches. Their names would be included on
the invitations to others as having committed to attend, possibly
along with some topics they consider proposing for the marketplace.
Has anyone tried this before? What do you all think about
inviting "key personalities" to an Open Space conference? Has
anyone done this? What benefits/pitfalls do you see, did you
experience? I have mixed thoughts and emotions, and would like
some further data to offer the planning groups. What effect on
"Whoever comes are the right people" happens when some folks
receive compensation for attendance and others don't?
Thanks,
Diana
Diana Larsen
www.futureworksconsulting.com
503-288-3550
Watch for:
"Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great" by Esther Derby &
Diana Larsen, available Summer 2006! Published by Pragmatic
Bookshelf (new title!)
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/dlret/index.html
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