OST experiences & reflections
EXPERIENCES
In november 2010, the project coordinators of "Open up Urban Spaces", Giulia Molinengo and Lena Hummel, facilitated an Open Space meeting during the conference: "Looking for European Citizienship".
Please contact Giulia Molinengo or Lena Hummel via This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , if you are interested in getting more information on their working experience on group facilitation and conference designing.
REFLECTIONS
Raising questions about Open Space Technology
Challening Open Space Technology by
Reflections on facilitating an Open Space [Berlin, June 18th – 20th 2010]
We, Giulia M. and Maria, facilitated the Open Space "How can we reflect and plan our project?" during our meeting in Berlin. We hereby want to reflect a little bit about our experiences and observations, thanks to the support that we got from the group and the two trainers Michael and Yaari.In general the main aims of the introduction of an OS are to get the group:
focused - empowered - active self-organised
The Introduction of an Open Space follows a clear structure, which is described by Harrison Owen and which we tried to follow. 
1. WELCOME BY ORGANIZER
The first minutes of the OS are opened by the organiser, who is usually a person who is known (directly or indirectly) by the participants. This person acts as a "contact point" between participants and facilitator.
Usually, he is supposed to briefly introduce the day, to talk about the topic and its background and to encourage the group to a fruitful discussion.
2. WELCOME BY FACILITATOR
Only one small sentence; no big talk about the content of the meeting, that's the job of the organizer and doesn't have to be emphasized by the facilitator; it's not his role to deal with the content and to "tell" people why this meeting is important (they "experience" it themselves)
REMARKS – Transition Organizer - Facilitator
In our case, we stayed outside the circle before being introduced by the Organizer. One important suggestion that came from the group has been to sit in the circle together with the participants. In the moment of introducing himself/herself, the facilitator stands up, says his/her name, and introduces very shortly what will be his/her role during this OS session. Michael & Yaari suggested not sitting in the circle because the facilitator in their opinion should not be part of the group but an outsider. In their view it would have been better to stand outside without being noticed by the group. In our opinion there are no clear solutions about what decision is better, but it might be important to reflect about this before and to understand what position one want to take.
3. FOCUS THE GROUP [group dimension]
- Get participants concentrated
- Making people feeling comfortable
- Creating the atmosphere
- Participants as protagonists of the day
REMARKS –Focusing the group
The circle has to be big enough for doing so! The circle that we prepared during the Berlin OS was definitely too little! The participants experienced this "walk in the circle" differently, some felt disturbed and uncomfortable, for some, the creation of an "atmosphere" of the OS and of concentrating worked out; The focusing on the group did not really happen because we did not emphasize this in our speech – therefore the goal of this part of the introduction was only partly reached
HOW?
- Walking the circle;
- Starting talking, calmly and slowly;
- Looking in the eyes of the participants. At a certain point, while you're looking in the eyes of a person, you'll attract the attention of the others on that person. That's a way to make participants aware of who else is in the room with them
- Addressing participants as a group, e.g.:
- "Imagine how much knowledge is in this room today – here the average of the group is around 25 years old and you are 10 participants. That means that there are 250 years of life experience";
- "Look at everybody; there might be people you had a lot of fun with, people you've worked with for years, people you had heated debates with..."
- [those ideas of what to say while walking in the circle and focusing the group are NOT written in the book by Harrison Owen; we got them told as advices by our trainers]
- The facilitator can keep walking in the circle & stopping at different spots for explanations during the whole introduction – this is supposed to show everybody the whole "space" that they can use during the Open Space
4. STATE THE TOPIC [content dimension]
- Same idea as in the welcome sentence; only shortly name the theme by slowly saying the question that has been agreed on for this OS session.
- Leave some time to the group to internalise the question and to think a little bit about it before moving on with the next step of the introduction.
5. INTRODUCTION OF THE REPORT [content dimension]
- The introduction of the report (how does it work, who is responsible for that, what to do when a report has been written) allows the facilitator to clear a little bit more the goals of the OS session and the tool to make it possible (the report itself).
- The report shows also that it's the responsibility of the participants to produce the contents of the "conference"
HOW?
- Gesture is important -> take the report sheet in your hands, state clearly the steps to fill it in, go close to the News Wall section to show where to hand it in.
- State clearly the deadline hour for reports to be handed in.
6. INTRODUCE AGENDA [content dimension]
- Giving people confidence in the method ("it will become full!") without really explaining how this will happen;
- Connecting participants with something "familiar" to them (agenda is generally used in conferences)
- Creating the vision
HOW?
- Making visible the space;
- Talking in a calm and confident way;
- The idea here is not to explain in detail how the agenda works but to give confidence in the method without explaining it
7. 4 PRINCIPLES, 1 LAW, 1 AMANDMENT, BUTTERFLY & BUMBLEBEE [method dimension]
- Visualising, naming and shortly explaining the principles, the Law, Butterfly and Bumblebee
- Giving people the time to think about the meaning of them
- Keeping the principles posters all along the day
REMARKS – Our presentation of the principles
Create the atmosphere of the Open Space by stating the Amandment ("Be prepared to be surprised!")
8. INITIATE THE AGENDA [getting started!]
- Make clear the steps in order to build up the agenda
- Showing them (taking a paper and a pen, explaining the contents to be written on – topic, name of the participant, time and place of the breakout session)
- Asking participants to announce their topic
REMARKS – What if you forget something?
In our explanation we forgot to explain some of the issues, which was a little bit disturbing, since we intervened later on to clarify what had been missed, when we should have been "invisible" (stickers with the "empty corner"). In this case, our trainers suggested of not interrupting the flow of the process. The group will take care of what the facilitators have missed during their introduction. This is actually what it has happened: mostly the participants found a way to answer those questions themselves or they raised the question during the introduction.
e.g. we forgot to change the pens from black into red after the agenda was created, so that new issues would be more visible, but this was solved by one participant who than created a sticker with the word "new" on it
Giving the floor to the group ("And now, the floor is yours")
9. MARKET PLACE
- Leaving the floor to participants, by inviting them to stand up and to set by their own the agenda
- Facilitator are getting invisible
- The OS will start as soon as participants will feel ready to do that
10. THE OS
- Facilitators "disappear"
Our observations:
- Mostly 2 of 4 breakout sessions were used
- Each session (except of the last) had about 2-8 participants
- There were some times when participants were just bumblebeeing/butterflying around
- As soon as we as facilitators were visible we were getting asked! When we were not visible, people found solutions themselves
- People were moving chairs, charts, pillows; were using things from the table of materials,... -> creation of their own space
- People took their "space" also outside
- People were getting concrete (dots on paper -> on wall)
11. EVENING NEWS
- space to announce things
- closure of the day, calming down
12. OTHER REFLECTIONS:
- Importance of the setting up phase
- Everything must be visible from the circle perspective!
- In order to ensure that, you as facilitator – before the OS session starts – should sit on one of the chairs of the participants and check whether from your position you can comfortably see all the signs (e.g. principles and law) of the OS setting
- Prepare carefully the space!
- The circle's dimension must be large enough for you as facilitator to walk inside. Moreover, you should leave enough space in the front to allow participants to comfortably see the agenda.
- Also the creation of the archive and the table of material are very important: if everything is well prepared, participants are more able to fully "use the space"
- The facilitator and the group: in the process, the facilitator is not expected to TRUST the group. This would lead to hierarchies, by putting the facilitator on a higher position towards the participants. On the contrary, the facilitator should simply assume the perspective of knowing that THE GROUP WILL MANAGE IT BY ITSELF.
- Importance of the body language of facilitators
- "Creating confidence with the words, Creating the space with your body"
- we forgot some small details during the OS: e.g. moving the flash of the agenda
Controversy thoughts about having two trainers:
- pro: we felt more confident; we felt that our position was a bit more natural that way, not one dominant person to "look at"
- con: we didn't have an assistant which we should have had, harder to get "invisible" when you're two; some participants felt uncomfortable with the second trainer standing next to the circle in the beginning, but we think we could avoid this feeling by standing on a different spot
- Michael & Yaari always work alone together with 1-2 assistants (depending on the size of the group), but they said that some facilitators do work in teams
For us it was a very enriching experience to facilitate this Open Space because we were able to observe the whole process from a different perspective and to get a deeper understanding on what is happening within the meeting!
Maria & Giulia
Berlin, 29.7.2010
