Open-Sourcing Conferences

Hello,

Following are thoughts about different ways to hold conferences:

I just read an article on Tim O'Reilly in Wired. And the last line referenced how the conference worked. I immediately thought of Open Space Technology (http://openspaceworld.org).

A similar, I think better model is being used around the world. It's called Open Space Technology (again http://.openspaceworld.org) - and World Cafe is another model (http://theworldcafe.com) - see at the end "No More Conferences by Maureen McCarthy"

A recent example was the National Girl Scouts conference which used both Open Space and World Cafe together in a multi-day conference with over 1,600 participants, both adults and kids.

For more detail see the end of this post.

I don't know if this is interesting or helpful, but here it is.

By the way, My wife and I have been using Open Space Technology and World Cafe for years in corporations, small businesses, community groups, with schools, in churches, in government, within various industries, just like so many other practitioners around the world. It is astounding how well it works.

Email if this is interesting.

Thanks for your time.

with grace and love,

Zelle

************
Zelle Nelson
Engaging the Soul at Work/Know Place Like Home/State of Grace Document

www.stateofgracedocument.com

zelle@maureenandzelle.com

Post on OSLIST:

Dear Open Space Friends,

It has been exactly one month since more than 1,600 Girl Scout National Delegates met in Open Space. I feel deeply grateful to each and everyone of you who helped us to hold the space at the Girl Scout National Convention. I haven't written until now because, frankly, I'm still processing what I experienced and learned and I'm not at all sure I can do justice to telling the story. I'm literally still dreaming about what was perhaps the most powerful experience of my life so far, short of giving birth 3 times.

My greatest joy in working on this project has been the incredible people and my personal reflections are filled with gratitude and awe. Foremost, I am grateful to my dear friend and business partner, Claudia Haack, who held the space with me with such grace, resilience and generosity that I was able to give myself fully to opening the space. Our partnership grew and our friendship flourished as we worked on this project together.

I think that part of why it’s taking me so long to digest what happened at the Girl Scout National Convention is that after a glorious day of Open Space, Claudia, our volunteer team and I anchored Strategy Cafes for close to 2,000 participants and generally worked on the fly for the next 3 days of the convention, including a final day with the Themefinding Team which looked across the Open Space and Strategy Café reports. All the while, we were working with close to 100 volunteers who had been trained in OS and World Café and who then self-organized for planning and implementation before, during and after the convention. As a member of the “Smooth Operators

It was a long time ago, but as I remember it - Phil Donahue used to do
a pretty good job of running something close to what you describe. He had a talk show, so the source of "knowledge" was really fresh questions for the guest (subject). But a vast majority of his show was him carrying the microphone throughout the audience and really being a moderator versus interviewer. This may be a real life analogy to how an open source conference would work.

Another way to improve a conference is to have a speaker present for a short time. Then say, "I'll be over here if anyone wants to talk "offline". Then you leave their mic live, plus add some mics into the crowd that gathers, and we just all listen in. I often join these post lecture jam sessions just to engage in the chit-chat. I often don't realize I had questions or input until I hear the others talking.

Open-sourceing conferences..I love the sound of that!