Dear Jutta, I will add two things to Michael's conclusions below. 1. when facilitating an OST meeting for a small group, be prepared that they might choose to look at all the topic titles in session one, find a creative way to merge them into one topic at the agenda wall, and then stay together. Should this happen, don't do anything. Just stay out of the way. 2. they might do the same thing for the second session of the day. What should you do about this? Again, nothing at all. Usually by the third session, this tendency of small groups straightens itself out if you do nothing. 3. when facilitating small groups, because it is more challenging to be invisible, create the conditions for yourself as the facilitator where you are not in the same room as them ie: go off to a different room and do whatever you need to do to be a 'resonant energy field generator' for their joyful and successful process.
Birgitt Williams www.dalarinternational.com -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael M Pannwitz Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 3:48 PM To: World wide Open Space Technology email list Subject: Re: [OSList] Open Space on private Mediation in Portugal on 3. /4. Febr. - coming soon!.... 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 _______________________________________________ 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
