Nice Larry....really sweet. I love the way you bring the energy and the generative nature of the conversation to another level with this. Thanks for the inspiration.
Chris On 4/19/07, Larry Peterson <[email protected]> wrote:
Peggy you asked: I'm intrigued with this approach as a very creative way of handling the desire that often exists to hear what happened in the room. Would you say more about this - what sparked the idea, how many were in the fishbowl (half hour isn't a lot of time and with 200 people, I'm imagining there were a fair number of sessions), what question did you use to launch the fishbowl? I'll describe the fishbowl process I used in a bit more detail. As suggested, this event was more "guided" than OST and this was also true of the fishbowl. It was not the Open Space Fishbowl that I described earlier based on Andrew's and my experience in Australia. The original design included the fishbowl as one option but I thought it unlikely. But given there were only 11 topic groups because some folks had left after lunch and maybe 100 – 125 were left in the room. Given the nature of the meeting (information) and health care professionals in Ontario (overwhelmed) this was not a surprise. It did make it possible to quickly put 12 chairs on risers (not in the centre of the room as I would preferred). I did create an empty chair, but it was soon filled. Not at all ideal in terms of set up. I was in the fishbowl to initiate, model and guide some aspects of the conversation – it was not completely self-organized. The initial question was, "What did you learn about telemedicine in your topic group discussion?" The first person to start speaking was an academic, who initially "presented" to the room rather than engage others in the circle. His body language was to orient toward the "audience". After he spoke I then asked if any others had discussions that related to the ideas just presented. That immediately got them telling about a point or idea from their topic group and soon others picked up and a conversation was happening. The fishbowl participants looked at me or each other and not the larger group and I modeled this with my body language. My back was to the larger group. I said very little, occasionally asked about a connection between ideas to keep the conversation aspect going. New ideas beyond just reporting emerged. The larger group (according to my colleague Sharon King) was very much engaged because it was not the usual "report back". The CEO of the sponsor organization said that when I announced what was coming he and his VP exchanged looks. However, he was surprised at what he learned when the report led to some synthesis and new higher level questions. Yes all of this happened in about a half-hour and when it was over, it was over. Hope this helps. Larry Larry Peterson Associates in Transformation Toronto, ON, Canada 416.653.4829 [email protected] www.spiritedorg.com * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-- CHRIS CORRIGAN Facilitation - Training Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com Principal, Harvest Moon Consultants, Ltd. http://www.harvestmoonconsultants.com * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
