Re: [OSList] OS & Open Conferences

[Harold Shinsato]

Hi Jon, There's been a lot of great responses so far. I'll just add a couple experience points. I've attended several of the Agile Open software conferences held in beautiful Open Space where there are numerous "Talking Head" experts who get paid to present and talk in front of crowds that propose sessions, along with those who just had a good question or hot topic. At these open space tech conferences, often times the presenters will be trying out new ideas, and other times they'll be doing the same song and dance they normally do. One advantage of the "experts" in the Agile software development field - they've all had it drilled in them pretty darn hard that unless a talk is interactive it's unlikely to be successful. But I'd still call them "talking head" sessions when the "expert" is clearly in charge of the session room and is talking at least 90% of the time. I still tend to prefer the smaller more interactive sessions that go around in a circle - but there was one expert at one of the Agile Open conferences in San Francisco that definitely held myself and the rest of the audience spell bound at their feet - kind of like Harrison mentioned in one of his replies. I was very glad I showed up for that talk! The other data point that is inspired by Peggy Holman's Journalism That Matters conferences - and by the Leadership in a Self-Organizing World conference in 2009. At Missoula BarCamp (an OST facilitated event) we actually flew in a professional artists coach from New Jersey. We let the artists coach talk (along with two others - including the Mayor) for 5 minutes before the OST formally started. After the OST opening, this artists coach posted a couple sessions onto the wall like all the other proposed sessions, and she held a couple a very successful sessions held in parallel with other sessions. It definitely works. One thing I will say - it takes a very confident and comfortable "expert" to jump into the fray like this. The expert could find themselves rather humbled if some novice offered more spaciousness and opportunity for learning than they did, and no one came to their expert session - or people came and then quickly exited! But I think such "experts" capable of succeeding in an OST conference are probably the only ones worth their salt.     Harold On 1/10/11 5:09 AM, Jon Harvey wrote: Dear all   I think I have managed to persuade a public conference producer to run (and charge for) one of their conferences using Open Space. I debated with her that the ‘talking heads’ type of conference with a smattering of workshops (which are usually mini plenary sessions too) could be so much more valuable and productive if OS was used. I said I would enquire if anyone else had done this – how did it go – what lessons did you draw?   This is something of a gamble I recognise, as this will not be quite the kind of issue that has to be solved yesterday kind of context. (Although given the current austerity measures which are sweeping across the UK public services right now – a lot of things have to be solved yesterday!) Also the people gathered will be a community of interest (ie they will all have signed up to come to the topic in questions) but not a community / group in any other way...   So what do people think – can this work – has this worked?   Many thanks   Very best wishes   Jon   _______________________________________________________________________________ -- Harold Shinsato har...@shinsato.com http://shinsato.com twitter: @hajush * * ========================================================== 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