James,

Online Open Space has been done a number of times.

The text based system that uses a very thorough Open Space Technology grounding and is quite mature is Gabriele Ender's http://www.openspace-online.com/.

Open Space Technology online with voice has been done with simple teleconferencing lines - usually more than one. MaestroConference is planning to add support for "Law of Two Feet" self-organizing - so people can move themselves between breakout sessions. I don't think they've completed it yet - but they have been actively working with our community to make something to support online voice open space technology events. http://maestroconference.com/

I think you could create an Open Space with multiple teleconference lines and have people meet in one of them for the plenary - and then hang up and move to other phone lines for the breakouts. http://www.freeconferencing.com/ offers free telephone numbers for teleconferences. They make their money because of a legal setup in the U.S. that they get a portion of the local telephone company revenues of those who call into their phone numbers. Christine Whitney Sanchez has done some of the largest Open Space meetings with the Girl Scouts - and she told me she used this multiple telephone conference line approach successfully.

There is also Skype and Google Hangout - I'm not sure how easily these would scale and I'd rather not be involved in the logistics of setting something like that up. I've personally found it touch and go just to hold a voice conference with these free offerings - but with some luck and some savvy - it could be done.

An attempt was made a few years ago to design an Open Space Technology online using http://secondlife.com - the 3D world where people meet using avatars with both text and voice. It has worked for World Cafe', but the experiment never completed for OST. It felt like the technology overhead and learning curve was too steep - though it could work.

I participated a few months ago with a very successful online Open Space for just a few hours. It is a platform using voice, text, and shared graphics through a website. There have been a few invitations to try this system. I did it November 2012. The online event was hosted by the Genuine Contact community that Birgitt Williams started - though I don't think it's officially a part of Genuine Contact - they do bring some of that mature understanding of Open Space. http://wisdomways.net.

Just to be complete - Harrison Owen has said the Internet is one big Open Space. People are self-organizing meetups constantly all over the net.

    Harold


On 4/19/13 3:55 PM, B.MELIN ALIDADE wrote:

@james sounds interesting, I would very much like to know more, and even, to participate on line..

I have never done this before, could be nice to think about it, (my Skype bea0102)

Thanks, Béatrice Melin

Marseilles, South of France

*De :*oslist-boun...@lists.openspacetech.org [mailto:oslist-boun...@lists.openspacetech.org] *De la part de* James Sheldon
*Envoyé :* vendredi 19 avril 2013 22:09
*À :* OSList@lists.openspacetech.org
*Objet :* [OSList] Entirely-online OSs?

Has anyone ever done an open space entirely online, like if participants are not able to travel and be in person together? I'm having trouble envisioning what these might look like...

I've got a small organization of maybe a half dozen people but was thinking we could issue an invite more broadly to people in our field.

~James



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