My next scheduled event is ITARC Atlanta February 25 – 27. I’ll be doing double-duty, both facilitating an Open Space and presenting my session on Facilitation Patterns and Antipatterns.
Archive for the ‘Open Space’ Category
First, since I would wonder and will therefore assume that you do too…
“Community Courtyard” is the name that Bob Familiar of Microsoft came up with to describe the space – physical and mental – that is set aside at an event for self-organizing, community-driven discussions. Bob came up with the name because I told him “You may not call it Open Space, because it is not Open Space and if you call it Open Space people will be angry with Microsoft for ‘doing it again’!”
This discussion occurred at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles in October, 2008 where I was “facilitating” an “Open Space” that should have been called a “Community Courtyard”. We were experimenting with the idea of providing a space and a framework for supporting self-organizing, community-driven discussion running in parallel with an event filled with stand-up, eyes-front presentations, labs, workshops, and other stuff that was the real reason that people were there.
At the PDC, it was okay, but not a big success. There was nothing wrong with it – it just didn’t get used much. And it wasn’t an Open Space.
So for the series of events called the MSDN Developer Conference (MDC), we called it Community Courtyard. I kinda like the name. Well done, Bob!
We’ve done ten of them so far – the MDCs. There’s one more to go, in San Francisco.
I have participated in six of the ten, Alan Stevens has done two of them, and Microsoft staff have done a couple of them. They’ve been more or less successful. I’d have to say that there are a few key lessons to be learned, should anyone else out there want to try the same thing. Lessons particularly about holding a space like this in parallel with an … event.
- The speakers must come. If the speakers come to the CC, the attendees will come. At the end of each presentation, the speaker should say “I’ll be going to the CC after this session. If you’d like to talk more about the material, please join me there.” This will draw people into the space, stir up some energy there, and maybe lead to unexpected results.
- There must be some way for the participants to communicate with each other, if they want to have a conversation. We tried word of mouth, whiteboards, and Twitter. Unfortunately, those don’t work well in these kinds of situations. At the PDC, we had the topics proposed by attendees displayed on a plasma TV screen – that worked MUCH better. At some of the MDCs, there was no wireless, or no mobile phone service, so Twitter and other electronic media didn’t work. There must be some way for (a) attendees to propose discussion topics and (b) other attendees to know what they are.
- Holding a Tweetup works! In Orlando, Joe (sorry, Joe, I don’t remember your last name) from Microsoft called a Tweetup. Fortunately there was wi-fi and mobile service, and a sizable group of people showed up. It led to some community discussions, including one about Open Space!
The main lesson for me, though, which other members of the Open Space community have expressed, is that you can’t do an Open Space in parallel with something else. You can do it before, after, or even as split days (half presentations, half Open Space). But you can’t effectively do it in parallel, because you can’t form the kind of community that is at the heart of Open Space events.
Lots of terms get tossed around: Open Space Technology, open spaces, unconference, bar camp, demo camp, product camp, foo camp,…
I’d argue that all of these “unconference” approaches derive from the work done by Harrison Owen, who wrote the book “Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide”.
In that book, he describes the process of coming together, creating the agenda, holding time and space, self-organizing, holding discussions, and closing. Yes, there’s more, but those are some of the key aspects of Open Space Technology. For me, when I say Open Space, or write it, it is (a) capitalized, recognizing that it is a proper name, and (b) refers to the process originated by Harrison Owen.
Recently, I’ve seen and heard people talking about “open spaces” as if there is some definition of that, and clearly implying that they are confusing Open Space Technology (OST) with something else. That something else seems to be the misconception that there is no structure or planning to OST, and that any time you provide an open space, chairs, and a whiteboard or two, you have “open spaces”.
I admit that this frustrates me, because it diluates and confuses something that I think is wonderful and powerful. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get the idea across so that others will grok it.
Of course, the simplest thing is to read the book or the entry on Wikipedia. Sadly, most folks won’t do that.
Next is for people to experience a “real” Open Space. In my experience, not only do they get it then, but they also fall in love with it. Sadly, there are too many people who think they know what OST is about, but deliver some perverted or incomplete version of it that matches some internal model, but not the system that many of us love.
One of the things that brought this home to me was a comment by an acquaintance after I’d finished the closing circle at an Open Space:
- “I told a friend of mine that I was going to this open space thing. He told me he doesn’t like open space. I asked him if he’d ever been to one of Doc’s open spaces. He said no. I told him that he hadn’t been to an Open Space yet, in that case.”
While I’m proud that someone thinks that’s what it’s about – that it’s me being wonderful and so forth – I’m equally dismayed that my acquaintance hit on something important, but stated it in a way that takes away from OST and puts it on me.
Yes, I believe that the facilitator is important. We don’t do much, really, but what we do is important. What my acquaintance pointed out to me was something I had observed – a facilitator who doesn’t get it, who doesn’t understand that the event belongs to and is about the participants, who doesn’t set the stage for them to take that ownership and self-organize – that facilitator is violating the whole idea behind OST.
Sigh.
As an Open Space Facilitator, I’ve had a number of interesting revelations.
First of all, I’m surprised at how relatively few people actually know of Open Space.
Then, I’m surprised at how many who do know of Open Space actually know what it really is. For instance, an acquaintance was explaining it to someone else and said “it’s like the lunch at this conference where everyone talks about what’s interesting to them.” Well, sort of, but not really.
I’m surprised at how often I hear “Oh, that’s what Open Space is about? Cool! I love it!”
And I’m still workinh on understanding what people think are the differences between Open Space Technology, Unconference, and the event categories that are derivatives of one kind or another (Bar Camp, Foo Camp, Demo Camp,…).
When I facilitate an Open Space, I tend to go for the “pure” Open Space Technology approach. Why? Because I have seen it work over and over, and believe in it. It’s not the be-all-and-end-all. It’s an approach/technique/technology that works for what it works for (which is definitely not “everything”).
