Aslak! How wonderful to meet you here! (Aslak and I write for the same
publication, though on different continents. Our founder is a magnet for
collaborative people :-)
Looks like good ideas travel fast - Naresh Jain used lightning talks in
his December "Simple Design and Testing" conference and we hope to do
the same at "Agile Coach Camp" to prime the pump for OpenSpace! We'll do
it the evening before, let people sleep on it, and see what happens in
the morning. Heck, maybe they won't even sleep - maybe they'll go out
for drinks and stay up all night talking! I.e. open the space
themselves, lol.
At Agile2007 some people took the initiative to organize lightning talks
on the last day... and we were all SO amazed at the
new/crazy/fascinating/off-the-wall ideas people had brought with them!
We all wished it had happened on day 1 of the conference. That's where I
got the idea to do it at AgileCoachCamp, not aware that my
co-conspirator Naresh was doing exactly that at SDTconf at Penn State,
at the very time I came up with the idea.
For those of you unfamiliar with Lightning Talks, there's an explanation
here that I cooked up for AgileCoachCamp. Enjoy!
http://wiki.agilecoachcamp.org/tiki-index.php?page=LightningTalks
deb
aslak hellesoy wrote:
Hi all,
I just want to thank everyone who gave me advice on how to run a "big"
Open Space session of 250-300 people (I thought that was big till I
came here) at the agile conference I helped organise in Norway in
November. Everything went far beyond our expectations, and I'd like to
share with you all what I *think* is a new way to run a conference.
We mixed Lightning Talks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Talk)
and Open Space. That is, 250 people were listening to several
10-minute lightning talks before lunch, and after lunch we had Open
Space sessions. Most of the people had never experienced any of these,
and several reported that they *really* loved Open Space and LT, but
more interestingly, they said that the many LTs before lunch really
fueled their thoughts and made the OS sessions more productive.
You can read more about how we did this here:
http://smidig.no/smidig2007/smidig_2007_press_release.pdf
http://smidig.no/smidig2007 (Norwegian)
http://flickr.com/photos/mahnve/sets/72157603325757918/ (photos)
Thanks again for the help
Cheers,
Aslak
On Nov 18, 2007 10:20 PM, Harrison Owen <hho...@verizon.net> wrote:
Sounds like you are getting some real good advice (what else on OSLIST?!)
Three things occur to me --
1) I find working with larger groups is actually easier than small ones.
Part of that is that there is a sufficient crowd that people don't feel
inclined to conversations during the opening. But as Michael points out, 250
people is rather on the small end of things.
2) When I invite people to announce their issues, I make it very clear that
there are to be no speeches. Just state your issue, your name -- and move
on. You don't have to sound like a drill sergeant, a smile will help, and
I've never had any objections. Occasionally people do get carried away, but
having said No Speeches at the start, I have no problem reiterating the
point (nicely) if I see a speech developing.
3) I think it is really important that there be NO limit on the number of
issues raised. A promise I always make in the invitation (or suggest that
the sponsor makes) is that EVERY ISSUE OF CONCERN to anybody will be on the
table. That can get a little interesting. In the OS that Michael refers to
(2108 participants) we had figured that there might be 175 issues raised --
but when the total was heading to 200 we had to move a little quickly to add
spaces. But we did, and everything worked. The final total was, as Michael
said, something like 236. And as near as I can tell all sessions met and
made a report. Number (of people or issues) need never be a problem. Good
luck! Don't forget to breath. And above all, Have fun!
Harrison
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland 20854
Phone 301-365-2093
Skype hhowen
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website www.ho-image.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] On Behalf Of aslak
hellesoy
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 10:25 AM
To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu
Subject: Advice on running Open Space with 250-300 people
Hi all,
I'm one of the organisers of a conference for agile software
development in Norway (http://smidig.no/smidig2007/talks).
It's two days and both days will have lots of 10 minute talks before
lunch (lightning talks) and OST after lunch.
We're expecting 250-300 people to attend, and I'm starting to get a
little overwhelmed about the OST sessions.
I have attended several smaller Open Space meetings, but never this
big, so I was hoping someone with experience of big OST meetings can
give some advice:
* Is 3 times 45 minutes topics (and 15 min break) ok?
* How many topics should we strive to create?
* How long should each participant get to suggest a topic?
* Should we split up the introduction/topic suggestion in two big groups?
My main worry is that with a big group like this it will be
challenging to create enough topics (and do it within a reasonable
time) so that people can put good use of the three hours they have
each day. I've read that OST has been used on much larger groups, but
I'm a little puzzled about the logistics.
Any help appreciated!
*
*
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