Hallo Harold, As an engineer and open space-freak I have to answer your beautiful challenge! I do understand your questions, but calm down, I'm sure the engineers will surprise you (and probably themselves aswell)! The theme should at least engage yourself - and be a question, that you and your colleagues don't know how to answer, but really want to know it! Don't be afraid of making the question too difficult - in open space no question is too difficult. Maybe you should expand your own thinking of engineers - don't you recognize them as ambitious, deeply involved in their own stuff, resultoriented as well as "reserved" - My guess is that you can give them a theme building upon the believe that they are deeply concerned about something, concerned enough to speak and suggest sessions - and hold your own suggestions until at least 15 other suggestions are raised...
I'm sure open space will work and you will do a good job! Lise Copenhagen, Denmark -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]] På vegne af Harold Shinsato Sendt: 14. januar 2008 17:26 Til: [email protected] Emne: Advice for an OS for learning & sharing for software developers Dear Open Spacetronauts, This is my first post to the list after an excellent training in San Francisco in OS Facilitation from Lisa Heft. With a one day OS coming up that I'll be facilitating in February, I'm a little daunted by the process of building the invitation and the theme and I have a few questions of how to manage things during the event. Some background, we used to be an independent engineering organization of about 50 software developers, QA, documentation, and managers in several locations in the U.S. and Europe. We used to hold a conventionally organized "Summit" with 2 tracks of presentations intended to share information about the industry and our own work. We would submit suggestions and management would choose the presentations. A few of the sessions would be interactive, but most were powerpoint talking heads. Last July our 150 person company was acquired by a 5000+ person company, which is being acquired by SAP, (40,000+). Even though we've been "assimilated", we're still fairly intact as an engineering organization. I've been given the ok to hold one of the three days of the Engineering Summit as Open Space. It's a great chance to open up great conversations about the strains and opportunities around the integration with a larger company. My questions for anyone who has done anything similar: How do I build an invitation and a theme to best engage the participants? Engineers are often fairly reserved. How can we best prepare them and get them engaged to suggest conversation topics when the actual Open Space happens? How can I get them thinking outside the box of a PowerPoint lecture? Is it possible I'll need to suggest some topics to get them started? Is it ok to talk about possible topics in the invitation without overtly pushing and driving the agenda? Do I have to hold back from suggesting topics during the agenda building session itself, even if I'm not in management. Thanks so much for any help. Happy 2008! Harold * * ========================================================== [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 * * ========================================================== [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
