Anne-- >From my experience, you likely need a meeting with a design team made up of representatives from the various groups that you mention in the organization. Allow enough time to play with the theme until you get beyond the obvious expressions, to something that the team feels excited about.
I have found that as an outsider, I am a poor predictor of what will resonate, intrigue, and excite people within the organization. Some design teams have come up with themes that totally left me cold, but they attracted lots of people to the meeting and started lively conversations. Your role can be to listen for what brings up energy and excitement (in the design team work), perhaps combine a couple of thoughts or statements and help the group shape the theme so it reads easily and is not too long or complicated. In other words, you are a facilitator here, not the proposer. In a case or two where the organization was not interested in getting involved with this process, the resulting OS did not work as well. When you have a design team and it is truly representative, you will begin to see the issues and coalitions that are likely to show up in Open Space. These people who are involved in the OS before the actual meeting date can also be your allies within the organization, drawing in other people by their own involvement and enthusiasm. All my best wishes for a project that should be an exciting one! Joelle Joelle Lyons Everett Sound Resources Shelton, Washington, USA ************************************** AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com. * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
