there is some discussion following the inclusive church conference on a few blogs about how to shift away from experts presenting on a stage. it’s easy to moan after any conference but i thought dave paisley‘s comment on jason’s blog was really helpful – he describes (in a comment) open source conferencing that offers a very different model as follows:
In my Masters work I came across something called Open Space
and got to use it a couple of times with amazing results. It appears to
be stuck in the hippie-ish/new agey/consultant ghetto in which it
originated, but it works incredibly well.
In a nutshell, it would work something like this (numbers are flexible, but just to give you some idea…):
1) You set aside enough meeting areas for everyone to meet in groups of
about 20 (so with 400 people you’d need 20 meeting spaces for about 20
people each).
2) You create a schedule for each room for an hour or two each, with
breaks in between. so 9:00 to 10:30, 11:00 to 12:30, 2:00 to 3:30.
Doesn’t seem very creative yet, does it?, but here’s the good part:
3) Anyone
with a topic of interest writes it on a piece of paper and posts it in
a meeting room/time slot. The topic only has to relate to the theme of
the meeting, which would be, say "Issues in the Emerging Church". Brian
McLaren could post a couple of ideas (but should be free at some times
to flit around and see what else is going on), but so could some
unknown newbie struggling to get started. If someone has proposed an
idea that someone else would like to expand or embellish, then it’s up
for discussion between the two parties involved.
4) Once the slate is filled up, start meeting at the appointed time.
5) Meeting rules: only the meeting organizer (the one that proposed the
topic) has to stay in that one meeting to record and record notes,
actions, insights, whatever. Everyone else is free to go to what
interests them and stay or flit around as the spirit moves them. These
butterflies are actually a key component for cross-pollinating
conversations in different meetings.
6) At the end of the day, all groups give a brief outline of what came
out of their discussion, but as long as somebody is taking notes in
each conversation these can all be available.
It might not sound like much, but the creative energy unleashed is
amazing – because the people drive the agenda and their input and
insight is valued. Plus, in the above scenario you’d have 60
meetings/conversations in a day rather than three or four large
sessions, or a whole bunch of workshops that weren’t exactly what
people wanted, and where the "experts" talk most of the time.
Couple of key points: It "opens the space" for quieter voices to
speak up – the loudmouths/extroverts can’t be everywhere at once, and
it allows people to participarte in what excites them.
I’ve used this in church, college and corporate settings and it works amazingly well every time.
i like the sound of this a lot…
hi Jonny. good to see you at the conf. i’m just wondering whether the ‘power-less discourse’ (the phrase I think you used when we were talking at the conference) which is supposed to characterise emerging church conversations happens primarily through blogs, e mail, relational stuff etc. i.e. more organically. and that actually conferences like the one last week are primarily about getting one person – in this case Brian Maclaren – who a lot of people want to hear – in a room where a lot of people can hear him. i think you’re right – we do need some new models for how we do the conference thing, that moves us away from the expert/audience speaker/listener dichotomy but that still recognises the fact that at the end of the day there just are some people that a lot of people want to hear and there’s little flexibility possible in the way that we organise that. Matt.
Jonny: love this format. This is very similar to what happened at the emergent gathering in New Mexico, and I gather has been the format for past years. The one missing element is the summary session at the end of the day.
It works really well, for all the reasons you stated. One other reason this format works is that in smaller settings people can explore ideas that they are not as comfortable with. My wife has felt that part of the emerging conversation is crap, and the gathering gave her a chance to talk that out and find people who are like her – at different stages of journey.
matt, i agree with you… maybe there could be some sort of combination of the two? i’m not against people sharing their wisdom. after all we regularly have blah where we invite someone to do exactly that. and like you i was partly there to hear brian (though mainly to meet up with people if i’m honest).
will, good to hear from you – glad to hear you’ve experienced that format work well.
cheers
AKMA attended a conference done in this manner – here’s more info: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/openspace/whatisos.html
BloggerCon also has an interesting format:
Blogger Con.
‘The format of the conference is four concurrent tracks of 1.5 hour sessions, moderated by a discussion leader. There are no panels. Each room will have experts and leaders, most of whom would be excellent panelists. The job of the moderator is to assemble a story by calling on the people at his or her disposal. They’re like reporters putting together a story, but you get to hear, first hand what the experts are saying, in their own voices. Think of Dan Gillmor’s adage that the people who read his weblog are much smarter than he is — that’s also the philosophy of BloggerCon.’
really like the sentiment of this open source approach. I didn’t attend the inclusive church conference, but mainly because i’ve been in previous years to emergent events and have been put off by the lack of supposed ‘conversation’, the ‘speaker-centric’ approach to knowledge sharing and an assumed ‘inner circle’ of emerging church leaders that are profiled. The format that is described would definately draw me back in!..
In the tech world there have been a few conferences picking up on that or related ideas which have seemed to go down very well with participants, though they have also tended to be more exclusive in terms of invitation lists than some.
eg. http://www.heyotwell.com/engaged2004/
I liked the way O’Reilly’s FooCamp was prepared using a wiki beforehand:
http://wiki.oreillynet.com/foocamp04/index.cgi
love the idea and great to hear that it works,
you say that you’ve used this model in church, college and corporate settings – have any of these been with much smaller numbers? what do you think is the smallest number of people & spaces/meetings you need to make it work?
Jonny
Open space works excellently as is a great avenue for creativity and enabling.
At the last YFC leadership team tour Richard Bromley did Open Space with us and the results from those meetings around the country have been very eye opening.
YFC at the cutting edge again!!
Just to be clear – it was me that wrote all that, not Jonny 😉
Thanks for posting it here Jonny. I’m glad there are other similar formats being used and with some success. The MAJOR stumbling block, and the only thing that can kill the spirit entirely is the organizers being unwilling or unable to let go of control of the agenda.
I suggested in a follow up email to Jason that something like this might be worth trying for half a day within a 2 or 3 day meeting. Lots to gain, almost nothing to lose.
And wouldn’t it be cool for Will’s wife to be able to post a meeting topic of “what’s crap about emergent?” and have that discussion with whoever showed up? I’d love to hear the report out of that one 😉
I’ve heard of this approach too – very Complex! – and it’s apparently excellent, though I’ve yet to experience it. There’s actually loads of group facilitation stuff out there, but, as usual, institutions (not just churches by any stretch) are very slow to take them up…
Cheers for putting the book up 😉
Heh, of course, there was an interesting discussion going on between some of us on the Emergent Convention Planning blog a while ago at: http://www.emergentconvention.com/planningblog/index.php?p=6 in which we chatted about open source conferencing.
And I started to ponder about it a little a few months ago at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/punchdrunk/393223.html
For me it almost reminds me of a coupld of folk festivals ive been to…
Well, well (other Darren), very cool to see that conversation. I think I made a comment somewhere on that blog sometime in the summer, but I stopped following it. If something like OS was used successfully at the Emergent gathering and we can keep the idea circulating maybe it’ll get used at something big.
The more I think about it though, having some kind of “learning” followed by an open space time to process it and work through the issues would be at least a stepping stone to a more fully open conference.
BTW, an example of a report out from an Open Space meeting (actually a series of three) is here: http://www.arts.wa.gov/progCAD/pdf/forward%20focus.pdf, which has the added bonus that a classmate and friend of mine was the facilitator for the Seattle session. The actual open space summaries start on page 8.
Cheers Dave,
I have to be the other darren, because there are four of us (that i know of) and it gets confusing 🙂
I’ve tried selling that kind of conference here to a number of people and the common thread that I’ve received back is “Yes, but how do I publicise the conference?”
The idea is that if it’s really open-space (http://www.openspaceworld.org/) then it’ll be hard to sell the conference to the church people that you’re wanting to come… or needing to come to make it run on a budget. This is because the program and what is discussed is really up to those people who gather.
But the reality of such conferences is that a number, a large number of people just gather for the sake of gathering,sure it may be hard to sell an OS conference to the Pastor or Minister of a congregation, but the idea would probably be taken up by someone outside the church structure…
I’m not sure about the learning then open space time though, sure, it’s a stepping stone, but im fed up with balancing on stepping stones and wouldnt mind to participate in a truely openspace program when we gather to support one another and we all bring stuff that forms the conference.
Kind of reminds me of the old TOLLS (tollsonline.org) days where what beople brought with them made up the worship time…
We provide a variety of spaces, an infrastructure, a vibe and the conference starts when people start to share…
dave – thanks for the idea – i did put it in italics and credit you honest!
kester – can’t believe you noticed so quick i’d added complex christ to the books! – i bought two copies to give away as well!!!
cheers
Well, snuck a look at your blog last night and couldn’t resist! Thanks. Cheque’s in the post 😉
On a serious note, I hope people find some inspiration in there for doing things in an open source | networked way. Off the back of the book some people asked me about their situation: wanting to do ‘more interesting stuff’ in their church, but with a leader who simply won’t let any of the reins go… Leaving people stifled and frustrated. It seems the ‘layity’ (sp?) are not to be trusted, not to be treated as intelligent, mature or thinking.
What is great about the sort of stuff above is that it actually affirms the many as worthy, with intelligent things to say and contribute, not as a bunch of no-brain stipend-funding vegetables.
PS, for those who haven’t seen it, there’s a discussion board based around the book on http://www.thecomplexchrist.com so if people want to discuss further…
Jonny, I know you know that I know – it just seemed like a couple of readers didn’t catch that…
And other Darren (so not the other one from Bewitched then?), I guess as a designer of really, really complicated things (airplanes) I’m used to compromise 😉
I’m never flying again…
after the inclusive church conference i drew a building that would oblige the event held in it to work this way – the spaces prevent you addressing too many people at once! this came out of conversations with a couple of people who thought the platform-led aspects didn’t represent what emergent were about.
the drawings will be up on smallritual.org over christmas – only time i’ve got to do it 🙁