Dear Harrison, this training design has been on a transformational journey since 1997 when Fred Moeller, Agnes v. Walther and I put on the now legendary 12 hour training (from 10 am till 10 pm on October 31, 1997 in a round, glassed church in Berlin) a year after I had been to your training at Roffey Park, UK in 1996 where you were assisted by legendary arctic pedestrian Romy Shovelton and after I had facilitated 15 open space-events myself. In fact, the mode of working in an open space (then we chose the traditional topic "How to create organizations that work") immediately followed by an open space on open space was gleaned from our long experience in training of OD consultants where experiental learning followed by reflection on the stuff learned was highly developed. As further trainings followed the design was refined and expanded. In 1999 Gabriela Ender and I trained some 40 os-facilitators in Austria (here we added action planing) closely followed by another training in Berlin in 2000 (we added setting up the open space by participants themselves) and a training in Moscow with Jo Toepfer (50 participants) where we added the 3rd os designed and facilitated by the participants themselves. Finding the theme for the first os during the training and designating a sponsor was first introduced in Westfalia in 2000 (51 participants) and in Hungary (41 participants) where Jo and I were joined by Felicia Schulz. In 2001, 2002 and 2003 there were more trainings with varying colleagues adding and changing further nuances: Eva Gehltomholt, Henning Bendsen in Denmark, Rudolf Netzelmann in Poland, Hans-Georg Wicke in Weimar at an international training and then the participant-organized training we just reported on. Somewhere in 2001 we started working with the "Question and Answers" posters that were put up from the moment the training started. The point of these posters was to allow participants to record their questions and quickly return into their role as participants (especially in the first os when tendency is high to focus on the technology). To deal with questions not answered we had a "nuts and bolts" session towards the end of the training. In our last training we installed "travel groups" that had various tasks among others to look at the questions and answers posters so that we could skip the "nuts and bolts" session at the end. This worked fine except that on the fifth day participants requested that we have an evening session just before their last night party. We agreed to that session at 8 pm under the condition that we would answer some questions with "its in the book" and would be served cold beer. Well, about half the group showed up beer and all, there were fine questions but about 30 minutes into this another part of the group came in for the "laugh therapy" session in the same room and that put an end to that. (later one participant came up to me and mentioned that she was also interersted in that session but stopped at the door as she heard me tell a story that she had heard a couple of times before and went to a more productive place for her). I myself then joined the laugh therapy session and we set a new world record of powerful, nonstop laughing in a group of about 20 people close at the edge of wetting my pants. After this encounter with participants I withdrew to quieter quarters in the bar. I think we will continue to skip the nuts and bolts part but respond to high energy requests from the group. Adding the "finding the theme", setting up the os by participants and designating a sponsor for the first os in the training (this happens between 4pm and 7:30pm on Sunday) has had the effect that the focus on the technology is reduced...in fact, the action planning part of this os produces tangible action steps. As we dropped "Delphi" and other statistical methods leading to prioritization in our ongoing work with open space we also kicked it out of the training design replacing it with the mini-os leading to action around issues people have passion for rather than issues that have high priority. This time we added this kind of action planning to the third os that was set up and facilitated by participants themselves followed by feedback. That worked just fine. But it also drained the participants so that on the last half day (Friday) the final round of dialog was cancelled in favor of having more time for individual work on the further journey as facilitators. As far as your question is concerned: Things did happen as we thought that they would. Still, it is a huge challenge every time (even though I have been through this with close to 600 participants in trainings) to fend off the idea that os can be learned or taught. Sticking to knowing that it can only be remembered (providing a selfexplanatory setting for the nuts and bolts) frustrates participants and trainers...two or three days down the road participants will send signals that they are on the remembering journey. But up to that point they experience the trainers as humorless, cold nitwits. As we were talking about future designs, we are now thinking that we would change the sequence of the 3 os-events. Instead of having the osonos between the os in which the "trainees" experience themselves as participants of an os and the os organized and facilitated by the "trainees" themselves we are now thinking of having the osonos as the last and third os with the possibility to reflect on both of the two prior experiences.
One other thing that we keep ruminating over is the urge to meet with others that have had extensive training experience, an os on designing events for remembering open space. In the meantime, we invite colleagues to walk with us during the training week. Greetings from Berlin still groggy mmp On Fri, 19 Mar 2004 08:35:24 -0500, Harrison Owen wrote: >And -- when you catch your breath (get some sleep), I would really be >interested in knowing what you thought was going to happen versus what >actually happened. And what did you learn from that. > >Harrison Michael M Pannwitz boscop Draisweg 1 12209 Berlin, Germany FON +49 - 30-772 8000 FAX +49 - 30-773 92 464 www.michaelmpannwitz.de www.openspace-landschaft.de An der E-Gruppe "openspacedeutsch" für deutschsprechende open space-PraktikerInnen interessiert? Enfach eine mail an mich. * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html