Dear Jutta,
on April 22, 1999 ten ladies aged 57 to 82 engaged as volunteers in the
work with groups of old people in protestant parishes in a district of
Berlin met in open space for a full day to reflect on "Issues in my work
with old people".
They had never heard of open space before.
Meeting in a venue that would have held an os for 60 people, this event
was facilitated and ran itself as any other event I ever was part of.
Participants managed their day, met in break out sessions (it was neat
to have a large space with all breakout sessions possible in the corners
of the large room) ... continuous buffet and news wall taking place in
the adjoining hall way...and there was action planning...
on March 28, 2001 the eleven-member team for strategic planning of the
German Railroad Corporation met for a day to improve their ability to
find solutions to some pressing issues. They had never heard of open
space before but were desperate since other stuff they had tried didn't
work for them. They had a large number of issues and wanted to deal with
all of them as a committee of the whole. After lunch, they restarted and
decided to work in differently sized breakout groups, a big step for
them in the direction of letting go of control and trusting each other more.
A month later they met again to reflect on their progress and further
plans, all in os.
On July 17 and 18, 2007 nine staff members of a small NGO with a focus
on adult education in Magdeburg met for 2 days in os to think through
their program and activities. Some of them had miserable memories of an
os event they were part of but most of them had never experienced os.
Again, it worked similarly as in the os with the ten ladies eight years
earlier.
Looking back at these 3 events and others of similar sizue, I find it
worked well not to make any adjustments to the procedure.
At the same time, your "presence" in a group of around ten people is
considerably larger than with 100 or even a couple of thousand folks.
In other words, staying "invisible" is more work and not interfering
with the forces of selforganisation is tougher to handle...and the
tendency for the individuals in the group to reflect on the group
process is larger (when a group becomes "large", which I think starts
with 34, it is very complex and unpredictable so that the tendency to
work at the level of trying to figure out the dynamics of the group
diminishes and the focus on the issues increases).
Have a great time and lets hear how it went!
Cheers
mmp
On 30.01.2012 20:47, Jutta Weimar wrote:
Dear Open Space friends,
Sitting at the kitchen table in our partners house in Estoril, near
Lisbon / Portugal we just talked about the Open Space event that will
happen here on friday and Saturday this week.
We met in Berlin last October, when Katian and Jose (www.mediarcom.com
<http://www.mediarcom.com>) came to be part of a boscop team and
experienced Open Space. And here is our concern:
Sofar about 12 people have registered for the event and in a way it
feels as this will be little. And to make a long story short: It will be
very helpful, if you share stories of small-scale Open Space events with
us (especially with groups unfamiliar with Open Space).
Love to hear from you
thanx in advance
Junta Weimar
_______________________________________________
OSList mailing list
To post send emails to [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
