alternative ways of structuring conferences
June 20, 2005I wanted to share this with Sandra for her conference, but I thought the rest of you might be interested as well. My friend is currently attending a training at John Abbott College on educating on human rights abuses.
She was learning about OpenSpace Technologies. Here’s a (marketing sounding) quote from their website:
In Open Space meetings, events and organizations, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance, such as: What is the strategy, group, organization or community that all stakeholders can support and work together to create?
“With groups of 5 to 1000 — working in one-day workshops, three-day conferences, or the regular weekly staff meeting — the common result is a powerful, effective connecting and strengthening of what’s already happening in the organization: planning and action, learning and doing, passion and responsibility, participation and performance. See also WorkingInOpenSpace (Guided Tour). ”
It lets people decide on an agenda together instead of it being set by the organizers. Also it’s big on setting up a structure to let things happen, instead of pre-determining the outcome and guiding people towards it.
I’m going to be using stuff like it for this conference in september. I’ll try to remember to come back here and let you all know how it went.
mike
