My first open space
I ran my first open space the other week.
What is open space?
For those that haven’t experienced it this is an approach to running meetings or conferences that leaves the agenda open for the participants. The way I have seen this applied is for attendees to do a very short elevator pitch regarding a subject for discussion at the beginning of the day. They then place a card on a large wall plan of the day indicating time slot and location of the session. This free form approach allows for small group discussions to be held in parallel. Throughout the day attendees move from session to session selecting subjects of interest from the board. Sessions tend to be run as open rooms so attendees are free to drift between sessions if they wish.
With some trepidation I requested that time was put aside in the schedule of my companies quarterly gathering. As you would expect I had some concern that no suggestions would be forth coming and the days schedule would have holes in it. In fact, attendees came up with a wide variety of ideas for discussion and all concerned appeared to enjoy the day.
If you have considered running an open space either for a local user group or at your place of work I can recommend it highly. I believe that the key to achieving active participation in a work environment is to be clear that sessions are informal, thus minimising prep work, and enable many sessions to run in parallel, enabling small group discussions on niche subjects.
