At 08:01 PM 6/12/2003 +0200, you wrote:
It seems to me that 500, 1000 or 2000 people are simple different social
aggregats (seen under the view of a participative approach). There are
many experiences working with 500 or so, but not too many with 1000 (I can
only remember one in Germany) and no experiences with 2000 so far. Open
Space roots in selforganization of praticipants in in a minimal structur.
The key question is How large is the ability of people to come along with
the complexitiy that emerges in a crowd of 2000?
I really failed to see any difference in the coping capacity with the group
of 2000 and any other group I have ever worked with.
To handle the sheer mass of people, space and choices. (Remember: 150
meter walk to see all the topics). My observation: many people found
(their) workshops, but I also observed many lost persons. To keep clear
whats going on under these circumstances can be a psychological and
physical challenge.
It is worse than that -- It is impossible. Which is why I never try. I do
sense the flow of energy, but in terms of being clear about what is going
on (especially in detail) -- no way -- especially when it is all in German.
Just gives me a bad headache.
But I know chaos is part of OS and however many people had good time,
like the pictures showed. And those, who felt uncomfortable found a way
or simple left. Did selforganization therfore work?
I don't think it has too much to do with being comfortable or
uncomfortable, and certainly I feel no particular obligation to set them at
ease. As a matter of fact, acute discomfort is often the (essential)
precursor to genuine learning. But I wouldn't try to make them
uncomfortable either. In fact, I wouldn't try to MAKE them anything at all.
My objective is only to enable an environment in which people can be fully
themselves (or at least as fully as they care/dare to be). As for
self-organization, that "worked" I believe, because all of life is
self-organizing. True there are some folks who think they did the
organizing, but on a charitable day, I would call them deluded. We can
assist the process. We can detract from the process. But I don't think we
can change the process, and certainly we did not create the process. For me
the process of Open Space is the process of life, is the process of
self-organization. All one thing.
We do not know, because there were no exitpolls and there was no need to
deliever any outcomes. 150 written report sheets only proof: if people
find a meet a theme of very large broad and no givens and they are
stimulated in the right way, they are able to have a good time. But if
you think about work with the need of shared outcomes? There might be
limititations of complexity that raises up with the number of people,
where the work starts to be insufficient. Ecological systems usually have
a limit of growth where they break down immediately, if it is too much of
anything. Where is that limit and what kind of nutrient enviroment could
be helpful to support a really large group under this conditions?
One basic truth in our world is that everything has a beginning, middle and
end. For us it is called birth, life, and death. This is true for each one
of us, and all of us together. One way or another, sometime or other, there
will arise a set of circumstances which overwhelm our capacity to cope. But
the strange thing is (at least to me) that we have gotten along as well as
we have -- and in fact are still here on planet Earth complaining about how
bad things have gotten. So yes, there are limits. There are limits to
everything. But I don't think we have even come close to finding out what
they are -- in Open Space, or in the great ball game of Life.
Harrison
Delivery and logistics
An OST.meeting in many cases is headed to delivery. This needs elements
that were missing in Würzhurg (there was no need for that). A really
working marketplace, the book, convergence and action planning. The
practical carry through of these procedures is in direct connection to the
size of a meeting.
1. Working sessions. I suppose the surprising huge number of workshops
emerged for two reasons: People where up on their own private passions.
They did not notice other ones with close contents and there was no need
to. Just walked in with their sheets. In a real working meeting people
probably attentive observe what's going on, to join in already convened
workshops or not to get into a competition of topics. This reduces the
number of workshops. And - if you work on a shared topic, there is
probably a limited number of topics that make sense - beyond the number of
people there.What does it mean? Let's say a meeting with 2000 people, 7
working sessions, 150 topics, (Harrisons bet). It's 21 workshops each
session and nearly 100 people in every single session in the average. Hmm,
I know that 100 people can work together very well, but every group, at
every time?
2. Marketplace: It is possible to concentrate 230 topics at a linge that
is smaller than 150 meter, for sure. I can hardly believe that it is
possible to overview the stuff, if there are thousands around you, but
imagine the crowd dealing! I believe more to individual arbitrariness than
to negotiations. This does not matter if your only interest is to find any
workshops where you can probably have a good time. But if you have high
interest because you have passion for the whole thing? Any ideas to handle
that?
3 Writing reports: Handwritten reports work beautiful at many occassions,
as I know. But my experience is, that the quality of typed reports is much
higher. People spend more time to think it over and to bring in a form
that is understandable for people, who did not share the workshop. And
this makes it easier to work on with it. To type in 230 reports made in,
lets say 7 working sessions, makes something like 30 - 50 PCs, right? A
technical challenge, you need probably a technical tent too, but you can
make it.
4. The book: To copy 150 reports, even of one page each, is 300.000
copies, right? May be you need a print office, but can make it. But how
much time does the crowd need to read the book before convergence? 2 hours
minimum? Maybe a little dizzy after?
5. Convergence: There is no need for convergence in a congress. In an
OSTmeeting: The voting software is very helpful. May be the easiest part,
if you have a lot of terminals to enter the votes. But it will take some
time and you need to have some clever ideas to make the result visualized.
It would be very helpful to merge topics to reduce the number. I can only
hardly imagine how it works with 2000. Selforganization? Maybe.
6 Action planning: There is no use for the "Top 10" formula. It creates
groups of an average number of 200. "Top 30"? Still 65 each. Any
experiences of action planning groups of this size? Would an "action
space", like the Berlin guys do it, help (another little OS for building
planning groups)? Maybe no difference for the numbers. At last the same
question as at the first bullet: Is there a limit of working ability of
groups by numbers and if, where?
I can imagine that OS is a beautiful ingredient to a congress, by using
some strong elements of OS and dropping some others (being aware of this).
But a succesful application in a congress does not answer all questions we
have, doing an OS-meeting with 2000.
And there is one very hard disadvantage: In Würzburg 2000 people believed
to have learned to know what OS is really like, but they experienced only
pieces of all the huge possibilities, we know that OS can have. Good
marketing? Bad marketing? Who knows...
Erich
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Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
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