Jack Martin Leith

Yesterday I ran a one-day Open Space facilitator training for members of the Transiton Towns movement in the Bristol area.

After introductions and a lengthy briefing from me on the mechanics, design, organisation and facilitation of an Open Space meeting, the 20 participants designed and ran their own Open Space on a theme of their own choosing. I gave them a four hour chunk of time and they decided the number and length of the timeslots, the number and location of the places to meet, and so on. I coached them from the wings, and tried to intervene as little as possible.

Four people shared the task of facilitating the opening circle, and this worked very well.

At 1600 it was time for me to wrap up the Open Space meeting. Sometimes verbal report-backs are called for, and this was one of those occasions. We used the rapid report-back process (I will describe this in a future article), and the leaders of the seven sessions gave one-minute summaries of their sessions in a total of little more than seven minutes.

I then talked about some of the action planning methods I use, and we ended the day with a closing circle, using a straw hat as a talking stick. (Anyone wishing to speak took the hat from the centre of the circle and put in on their head.)

The day was a huge success and participants left the venue fired up and ready to run their first Open Space meeting.

Read the rest

The principles and practices of Open Space Technology have changed very little since its inception in 1985. And those who dare to challenge its orthodoxies tend to be viewed as heretics by the Open Space establishment.

Meanwhile, the Internet has transformed the way people work. Web 1.0 has morphed into Web 2.0. Techies have fused Web 2.0 tools with a sanitised version of Open Space to create an increasingly popular event format called BarCamp. Old-school conference organisers have woken up to the idea of “unconferences” (see the web article, Planner’s Workshop: Planning the Unconference, by Mary E. Boone). And talking to a 25-year-old laptop-wielding twitterer about the pioneering work done during the 1980s by people like Harrison Owen, Marvin Weisbord and the late Kathie Dannemiller is like your great grandfather going on about life in the trenches during the First World War.

Given all of that, has the time come for Open Space practitioners to “upgrade” to Open Space 2.0? Do we need to ditch the dogma (“Always do X.” “Never do Y.”) and develop a new strain of Open Space that’s better suited to the needs of today’s organisations and communities? If so, what might this new and improved version look like? How would it be different from Open Space 1.0?  How can we exploit the “technology” aspect of Open Space Technology? What are the issues and opportunities for Open Space practice in a post-modern world?

Paul Levy (on the left in the photo) and Jack Martin Leith (on the right) invite you to explore these ideas in an intimate setting, with no holds barred. While honouring Harrison Owen, the originator of Open Space Technology, and respecting the ground-breaking work done by other Open Space elders, participants in the two-hour workshop will expose the dogma, create new possibilities and pave the way for the next “release” of Open Space.

If you are unable to get to Brighton you can participate remotely through Skype. And if you are new to the world of Open Space, Paul and Jack will brief you on Open Space customs and practices ahead of the event.

Better reserve your place now!

Open Space 2.0: Beyond the Dogma is part of The Critical Incident, a programme of provocative events organised by CATS3000 and taking place during the Brighton Festival.

Date: Wednesday 14 May 2008
Times: 1400 to 1600
Venue: CATS 3000, 11 Jew Street, Brighton BN1 1UT (Google Map)
Cost: £25 (ticket gives you entry to all Critical Incident events)
Bookings: please email Paul
More information: please contact Jack
Advance booking is essential as places are limited. Yes, they really are!

• Open Space 1.0 – what we’ll be challenging
• Make a comment | Read comments made by others
• View additional comments received via email etc.

Read the rest

In the April 2008 edition of Management Today, journalist John Morrish writes:

Business is in the throes of a passionate affair with simplicity – all the way up from product design to organisational design.

Morrish tells us about two books aimed at those pursuing organisational simplicity: 

• Simplicity, by Bill Jensen, an American management consultant and self-styled “Mr Simplicity”.
• The Laws of Simplicity, by MIT professor and simplicity guru John Maeda.

I haven’t read either book, but I like the sound of the one written by Bill Jensen. He argues that management should be user-centred, designing its strategies and processes backwards from the needs and capabilities of staff members. More about that in a moment.

Simplicity may look like a management fad (download Sally Bean’s enjoyable article, The Lifecycle of a Big Idea), but it’s been around since the 14th century, when William of Occam stated his famous razor: Do not multiply entities beyond necessity, often paraphrased as All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best. And six hundred years later, Albert Einstein said something very similar: Make things as simple as possible — but no simpler.

Read the rest

We hear a lot of talk these days about Open Innovation (American academic Henry Chesbrough wrote the book), but not very much about Open Space Innovation. I’m not talking about new developments in the field of Open Space Technology – I’ll leave that for another day – but rather about using Open Space Technology to accelerate the process of new product development and other forms of innovation.

Jeffrey Hyman and I did just that for a global food manufacturer a few years ago, and it worked so well that we seriously considered forming a company to commercialise the process. Fate had other plans for us, and Jeffrey became the founder and chairman of the Food & Drink Innovation Network. Now that the statute of limitations is no longer in force, I am able to show you the mirrors, hidden levers and trapdoor so that you can work the magic for yourself.

Read the rest

I’m just back from Madrid, where I ran a 60 minute Open Space as part of the MIT Global Startup Workshop, an annual conference for young entrepreneurs, academics, venture capitalists and other members of the “entrepreneurial ecosystem”.

My session was billed as an Open Breakout Session, and I was a last-minute replacement for a friend who was unable to make the trip to Madrid.

Doing Open Space in an hour was a massive challenge but when I asked myself “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”, the answer – creative chaos – gave me the confidence to give it a try.

Read the rest

David Gurteen is a prominent commentator on knowledge management, the co-creator of an invaluable resource called the Gurteen Knowledge Website, the beating heart of the Gurteen Knowledge Community, and the originator of Knowledge Cafés.

Two years ago I had the great pleasure of meeting David at Contactivity, a gathering of knowledge management and innovation practitioners organised by my friend and colleague Ed Mitchell, where he gave the participants a taste of Knowledge Cafés and I gave them a sample of Open Space.

David is very generous in sharing his knowledge, which he does primarily through his website, his blog (the Gurteen Knowledge Log) and the Gurteen Knowledge Letter.

Read the rest

Twice each year the Open Space community, through its email list OSList, holds a restricted form poetry contest. The winner becomes Poet Laureate for the next six months and hosts the next contest.

The winning entry in the latest contest (theme: Your inner experience in Open Space) was announced today, and Jeff Aitken is the new Poet Laureate. Here is his winning poem:

Read the rest