Hi Christine!
There is one microphone and no management except self-management.
The goal:
* Capture rich feedback across the entire membership using
self-organization and 1 microphone
* Scale to any number of participants (even 3000 or more) in a single
unified circle with no management except self-management
Rules:
* At the start, the time limit is expressed clearly by the
Facilitator; typically twice
* At the start, each person 1st looks around and notices who is next
to them to the immediate left and immediate right. The chance of
interacting with some of them is nearly 100%...
* One microphone is then passed by Facilitator to a circle member, to
start the Closing Circle. The members pass it around, subject to a
single rule:
* If the microphone hits you, you look in the direction the mic is
going and connect with those [2] people downstream; and discuss and
decide who will talk. By agreement of these [3], exactly one person
talks. The microphone is then passed downstream to the next [3] who
repeat the process.
Progress:
* Tracked by time remaining relative to the microphone location (% done)
Participation:
* Opt-in. Anyone can pass. In theory anyone can talk. All decisions by
consent of the [3].
This technique can be used anywhere the Closing Circle time is short
relative to the participant count.
Daniel
On 2/8/15 4:48 PM, christine koehler wrote:
Hi Dan
Wonderful ! I can see you walking away slowly from the center to open
the market place. Very powerful way to show how to "get out of the way
to let them go to work".
I am not sure to understand what you did for the closing circle. Was
there one mic passed around the circle ? Or did you invite people who
wanted to talk to do it together with their 2 neighbors , thus having
only a (self)selection of participants talking ?
christine
On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 7:19 PM, Daniel Mezick via OSList
<oslist@lists.openspacetech.org
<mailto:oslist@lists.openspacetech.org>> wrote:
Greetings All,
I recently received an invitation to open space twice (2 locations
scheduled one week apart) for a very large USA organization. Both
events in both locations had many hundreds in attendance; we
arranged seating for 400 at the 2nd event. (see link and pic
listed below.) All in all over 1100 persons in total received an
invite to one or the other of these events.
I learned a few things that I am sharing here now. My intention in
sharing is to help others who might find themselves arranging and
executing larger-attendance Open Space events....
The general theme of the learning has everything to do with that
idea of 'one less thing to do'....
===============================================
Thing1: Opening circle
===============================================
At the 1st event, when the moment of invitation arrived, I simply
placed the microphone very slowly in the center of the circle..
and very slowly walked away, and found myself a seat. They figured
the rest out ...without any assistance whatsoever from me.
Awkwardness was replaced by flow as they realized I wasn't doing
anything and the group advised itself.
At the 2nd event, the client knew me and the process by then. So,
after putting that microphone down, I just went all the way ...and
slowly vacated the circle completely. It worked great...and felt
really good too. I stood motionless well away from the circle for
several minutes before moving slowly along to a new place and
repeating that until I circled-the-circle exactly one time.
I plan to keep doing something like this going forward.
Any stuff that needed "managing" was handled by the group without
any help from me.
One less thing...
===============================================
Thing2: Marketplace "help"
===============================================
For large gatherings, some OST sages suggest situating 'helpers'
at the time-space grid, presumably to assist participants if they
need it.
Not having done any OST events larger than 230 members, I was kind
of unsure about what to do about this. Felt to much like "managing
stuff" to me. So for the 2nd event I decided to omit any
Marketplace assistance whatsoever from the experience-design, even
though the group was much larger than my experience.
After I slowly and deliberately explained and demonstrated the
process of posting to the Marketplace, I laid the microphone down
at center very deliberately, and slowly vacated the circle. And
observed what they were going to do. And almost immediately this
one guy (who posted early) lingered at the Marketplace. And he
took it upon himself to orient anyone who had a question. Some of
those he oriented then began also orienting the others.
One less thing....
===============================================
Thing3: Space-Time Grid of Post-Its
===============================================
We expected 400++ so we had 18 session spaces and 5 1-hour time
slots. We we built a grid with 5 time-rows and 18 space-columns,
with each time-row a single color. Total 5X18=90 session tags. The
5 times were coded in 5 colors.
When it became obvious the attendance was under 300, we simply
draped a "curtain" of Post-It flip-chart pages over the rightmost
end of these 5 time-rows to truncate the number of available
spaces from 18 to 13, for a total of :
[5 timerows] X [13 spacecolumns] = [65 total session tags]
...After the start of the first session-time we later exposed
additional space-columns 14 and 15 (each with 5 time-rows) so
folks could add up to 10 more sessions throughout the day if they
wanted to do that. We also placed the microphone over there.
===============================================
Thing 4: Whoops: Marketplace crowded by the circle; 1 MORE thing
to do....
===============================================
...When we arrived the evening ahead of the event, this epic
circle of 400 chairs (see pics and links) was situated in the very
center of room. The circle was clearly crowding the Marketplace.
It became obvious that about 50 chairs needed to be moved before
the Marketplace opened. We were told we could not move any chairs
that evening. (Something about facilities.) With the client, we
decided to do the following:
...At the moment just before the Marketplace was declared open, we
paused everyone and asked those 50 people seated in those 50
chairs if they might be willing to get up, pick up their chair,
and carry it over to the opposite side of the space. It took about
45 seconds for the group to move those 50 chairs. Thereafter we
declared the Marketplace open.
All in all a great event ensued. It was a large learning
experience for all of us who took part in arranging and executing
these two larger events.
===============================================
Thing 5: Huge closing circle, not much time...
===============================================
Some more experienced Open Space friends suggested having 2 or
more "runners" each 2 microphones running around, instead of
passing the microphone from hand to hand. The so-called "popcorn"
method. Imagining this made me feel very uncomfortable, so I
rejected it. I did not have an alternative at the time but
realized I had the current day and the whole next day to come up
with something.
So I slept on it.
I woke up with this: Closing circle: "Now we pass the microphone
around, to express what we think and feel, about our experience
together...before we start, take a look to your right and notice
the [2] people sitting closest to you .. (pregnant pause). Now
look to the left and notice those two folks also .. (pregnant
pause). When you get the microphone, *connect with those two
people to your left, and you all decide who is going to talk.*
Then go, and when done, pass the microphone to the next [3] people."
...the numbers 2 and 3 can be configured to match the situation at
hand, such that the closing can include everyone and stay within
the time constraint.
One less thing to do?
Kind Regards,
Daniel
Link to larger picture:
https://twitter.com/DanielMezick/status/563596914193891328
--
Daniel Mezick, President
New Technology Solutions Inc.
(203) 915 7248 (cell)
Bio <http://newtechusa.net/dan-mezick/>. Blog
<http://newtechusa.net/blog/>. Twitter
<http://twitter.com/#%21/danmezick/>.
Examine my new book:The Culture Game
<http://newtechusa.net/about/the-culture-game-book/>: Tools for
the Agile Manager.
Explore Agile Team Training
<http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-training/> and
Coaching. <http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-coaching/>
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--
Christine Koehler, créatrice d'espace de Dialogue et de Coopération
Executive Coach, Médiateur
www.christine-koehler.fr <http://www.christine-koehler.fr/>
Tel : 06 13 28 71 38
Fax : 09 72 32 36 65
--
Daniel Mezick, President
New Technology Solutions Inc.
(203) 915 7248 (cell)
Bio <http://newtechusa.net/dan-mezick/>. Blog
<http://newtechusa.net/blog/>. Twitter <http://twitter.com/#%21/danmezick/>.
Examine my new book:The Culture Game
<http://newtechusa.net/about/the-culture-game-book/>: Tools for the
Agile Manager.
Explore Agile Team Training
<http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-training/> and Coaching.
<http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-coaching/>
Explore the Agile Boston <http://newtechusa.net//user-groups/ma/>Community.
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