Open Space Technologies
Before Web 2.0, the Internet was always open
Johannes Kuhn interviews Harrison Owen on April 13th, 2007
In the 1980s Harrison Owen invented Open Space, a form build on very similar principles to today's unconferences. He has been doing it since for social, political and business meetings. The Open Space World Map lists 125 countries around the world.
Johannes Kuhn: How did Open Space Technology (OST) get started?
Harrison Owen: Basically, I convened a symposium on organisation transformation in 1983 and it took me a full year to organize it. Afterwards, everybody said they liked the coffeebreaks the best. In 1985, they asked me to do it again, but I knew it had to be done differently. I had seen the basic idea in West Africa where I was an Associate Director of the Peace Corps in Liberia some years before. I lived a year in a small bush village and, every time there was a major thing like somebody’s wife running away or a land dispute, the people were sitting in a circle together to discuss. This is a tradition all over Africa.
So I thought a circle would be good thing to start, but you need something where people can put down what they found out - a bulletin board. Then people have to find where they can meet to start the exchange - a market place, in a way. So the concept was born: Invite people to sit in a circle, create a bulletin board, set up a market place and go to work.
Q: When did you try it outside of this symposium?
A: At the first Open Space we were 85 people and it went on quite fine - actually, we did not change the concept, it was just our audience was growing. In 1990, a client of mine asked me to try to do a conference like this because he had problems to solve quickly - and so I tried it with “human beings,” meaning corporate executives.
Since then, Open Space has been used in excess of 100,000 times in 124 countries. The number of participants is almost impossible to estimate, but six million would probably be a low estimate. Group sizes have ranged from five people to 2,108 in Germany.
Q: How did the OST in Germany work out?
A: Fine, just like any other OST, except that it took place in two circus tents. It took us only 1 ½ hours to form the groups and we had 236 people queuing up to announce what their group was going to do. In the end we had 236 groups producing results and ideas. I have never seen any difference in terms of group size, culture, education, economics, any of the usual parameters.
Q: Is it difficult to make people participate?
A: The hardest part is for the sponsor. For example, the CEO has to make the decision to do Open Space. Once people are involved. Their behaviour can be 180 degrees away from their normal behaviour, but they were invited and they came, so they want to get to work. And that is the drive behind everything. And if they do not like the way things develop, they always have their two feet to go. We call that the Law of Two Feet.
Q: But if people have different interests?
A: Open Space Technology is always about solving something - for example a business issue or anything you care about. If you don’t care, nothing happens. The motivation behind doing an OST can be just about anything that concerns people.
One example: The Italian government invited me to do an Open Space with Palestinians and Israelis – and those people were not peaceniks, they were invited to sit in a circle with people they did not know and probably didn’t like. They were discussing issues for ages, but doing it in Open Space made it easier for them to confront each other with those issues. After the meeting, they were leaving each other with respect, some were even hugging and kissing each other. A senior adviser of the Israeli foreign minister later wrote to me, calling this moment the “intimacy of open space”.
Q: How did you do the setting?
A: The trick it to provide sufficient space so that people don’t have to run around each other. If you give them some room, emotional but also real space, it will not resolve the conflict people might have with each other, but it will enable them to put their passion to useful work. And, generally, do not take on subjects that are too abstract. Things have to be concrete, concrete and practical. For example, if your goal is peace, don’t work for peace but for better water, better roads.
Q: What is the most OST online space in your opinion?
A: The whole internet is a self-organising system! Funny, the web, when it was all text, happened at the same time OST did. We were actually using the web as and adjunct to support Open Spaces. You could do Open Space completely on the web or make it a part where the people participate electronically. So, I guess, the answer is the internet as a surrounding for communication is itself Open Space.
Q: In your books, you find similarities between Open Space and nature …
A: My observation and conclusion is: all of the 6,5 billion people, plus nature, plus cosmos – you find it is Open Space because it is self organising. Everything is always on its way from order to chaos and from chaos to order. And the best way to screw up a self organising system is to organise it. So this is the same with nature, societies and the internet: Learning how a self organising system works is very useful, but you will never be able to control it. Something in the structure will kick in to add a different pattern, like a butterfly flapping its wings. You will never learn how to take charge of the butterfly.
Q: And as far as anthropology is concerned?
A: I told you about Africa - there you can also find indigenous markets that are organised by nobody; they are running by themselves. But we have done this OST so often and in so many different cultures that I feel that it is something very natural for people to come together like this. People all over the world have been dealing with self-organisation. I once did an Open Space where a Navarro Chief was involved. When he saw what we are doing – sit in a circle, make a bulletin board, create a market – he came to me, smiled and said: “White man, why did it take you so long?” His tribe probably had known the concept for ages.
Q: This sounds very Buddhist - or anarchistic?
A: It is not anarchistic, anarchists I know tend to destroy things – probably anarchism is the exact opposite of what we are doing. Buddhists try to keep things flowing and making you realise the moment, the way the system is spinning. Open Space is like training wheels on a child’s bike. It helps us to become aware how everything around us is working, organising itself through all the small things happening and contributing. Under ideal circumstances, OST will disappear one day because people will realise how it works and do what they do. Not making it reality, but realising that Open Space is reality - that we are living in a made up world if we say we are in charge. So we can get rid of the training wheels and just learn how to drive.
Q: How come unconferences like Tim O’Reilly have become so popular in the last couple of years if this concept sounds so similar - or is there any difference to Open Space Technology?
A: Well, the idea of Open Space is not new at all – I did not create OST, I stumbled into it. I have heard about unconferences and some of the people involved attended Open Space when they were a lot younger, perhaps 15 years ago. OST has never been franchised, so anybody can use it and call it what they like - unconference or even Wiener Schnitzel. The only disadvantage not calling unconferences Open Space is thousands of people who know OST say, “hey, this is Open Space” when they learn about it.
(Edited by Amanda Michel)
