by Flemming Funch
I try to go to some conference every month or two, to stay in touch with what is out there, and to connect with real people. The conference I just went to,
Structures for Change in Seattle, represents what I most enjoy when I go. The focus was on the people who came, not on any presenters, because there largely weren't any. And it was run by Open Space principles.
For those who don't know and haven't tried it, Open Space is a format for self-organization in some setting where there is a group of people present. Anybody can propose a sub-group on any topic, and propose the activities that will take place in that group. Some people might come, or maybe nobody shows up, or maybe everybody shows up. Either way, it is what was supposed to happen. People are free to move around and go to a different group, according to the "law of two feet". In my view this is one of the most meaningful ways of organizing a conference.
But, as I've noticed in other settings working by similar rules, it also means that some people end up walking away in frustration, because the whole group doesn't end up talking about what THEY think they should have been talking about, and they probably don't end up all agreeing on anything. But, in reality, the majority of the people there will have ended up spending their time on the subjects they wanted to work on, with the people they wanted to work on them with.
So, I was part of groups discussing the evolution of society, groups talking about the inter-personal obstacles we run into, groups playing games to creatively try to figure out how to get from "here" to "there". And I spent a good deal of time talking about how all of our different groups might potentially share something. A database, a way of communicating, a directory, etc. Well, I guess I'm mainly interested in focusing on the technical elements that might connect all of "us" together. But we looked at it from different angles, such as what it would feel like. At any rate, I feel it is closer than before.
What is accomplished at a conference like that is probably a lot of little connections formed, which might become something big later. And people from many different groups connect with a common beat of some kind that they're beating to.
|
|