Customer Reviews

Open Space Technology: A User's Guide

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Harrison Owen, the creator of the facilitation concept of "open space", has written a fabulous user guide for anyone wishing to attempt this process. Not only does he outline in detail the nitty-gritty of effectively running a one to three day conference using this technique, but he also describes his own experience utilizing "open space". His stories are truly inspiring and do an excellent job of demonstrating the power of this method. I was especially impressed by the way he drew on several native american and west african philosophies to shape aspects of the facilitation.

Having participated in open space workshops, I had a good grasp of the idea and could easily picture what he described. For others who have not yet had that experience, reading another of his books, Tales from Open Space, might also be useful as it goes into more historical detail of the evolution of Owen's work and gives additional anecdotes.

When I particpated in my first Open Space, a friend told me to trust the process. At first glance, Open Space seems not to make a lick of sense or too "airy fairy" to work. Its a powerful process I've used this book as a guide to help me facilitate many Open Space sessions.

I highly recommend this book if you want to facilite Open Space---it provides many good ideas for before, during and after the session, covers when and when not to use Open Space, and gives the would-be facilitor the mind- and heart-set to facilitate Open Space well. I would not recommend faciltiating Open Space without first experiencing it.

I've used Open Space with churches, as a partnership-building experience, in organizational change, and in forming national government programs---in the right hands and at the right time, Open Space is a powerful process---this book gives you tools to facilitate it. Use it wisely and well!

Harrison Owen presents a hands-on, step-by-step manual for putting on an open space technology workshop. In OST workshops, participants basically set and facilitate the agenda with some guidance from a facilitator. Here, the book's examples are particularly handy. Owen suggests conference duration, agenda and techniques including how to set up a meeting, invite participants, prepare the logistics and meeting site, facilitate activities and more. While these workshops generally involve hundreds of people, you can also put on an OST event with as few as five. If you want to read gripping business philosophy, look elsewhere - this is a practical how-to manual, a task it accomplishes quite well. We [...] recommend this informative guided tour of the OST process to those who want to know how, because they already know why

After reading this book, I attended an Open Space conducted by a trained facilitator. The results were fantastic! Just as described in this User Guide. It is easy to understand and captures the essential understanding necessary to conduct or participate in an Open space event.

I recommend using open space tehcnology and/or other large scale intervention techniques to mine the collective emotional intelligence of a group of people (this may be your company, or people from an acadamic field you belong to).

This book gives you the details on HOW to organize and facilitate an open space meeting - (what kind of location you need, how to organize the room, how to use break up rooms, how to facilitate, ...). You'll also get imporatnt rules and lessons for making this technology work. In short, it's pretty good at doing this "HOW TO" part.

WARNING: If you want to know WHY it works and if you want some examples, there are 2 other books to take a look at:

- tales from Open space (Harrison Owen, Editor, 1995)

- Expanding our now (Harrison Owen, 1997)

Good luck!

Patrick E.C. Merlevede, MSc -- author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"

Open Space Technology is nearly identical to the "unconference" approach to workshop and event planning that's currently fashionable (see "Foo Camp" or "Bar Camp" or many other geek-oriented "camps). Basically, abandon a traditional agenda and force the workshop participants to self-organize a schedule, goals, and work. It's profoundly counter-intuitive, everyone assumes that a strict plan is necessary...but it turns out to work. People really enjoy participating in an event where their opinions matter, and where everyone's responsible for raising issues they find important.

This book can come across as annoyingly new agey and dippy at times (I see someone's tagged it "embracing group genius" here on Amazon...your mileage may vary a bit from that). It's probably more helpful in getting you the facilitator into the right mindset, and encouraging you not to fall back on the crutches of detailed schedules or keynote speakers. It's pretty dated when it talks about using computers in your event, but that doesn't really matter.

This is a very good hand-book for open space newcomers.Easy to understand and easy to read.I strongly suggest this book for anybody who want to start learning open space technology

Most organizations are full of lots of varied, intelligent people, with experience to contribute if only you could find a way to gather their contributions. Without issues of ego, prestige, rank, culture, language, or education getting in the way. Open Space Technology is a meeting facilitation method that its originators think can achieve all that. While the method, as described in the book, may seem a bit "touchy-feely", it looks easy enough to try and see. Especially because the book is written as a down-to-earth how-to manual. Refreshing in its simplicity, in telling you what small details do matter for the success of the method, and what issues don't matter. Actually trying the method might look a little bit scary, but start by just reading the book -- that's easy enough. There's very little to lose, and a lot to gain if this simple conferencing method really can bring out the benefits from all your good people.

I have successfully organized and facilitated several Open Space workshops using this as my "go-to" resource. It brings the technology to practical life by outlining how to facilitate the before, during and after aspects of a successful Open Space event. I highly recommend this book for those who want to become Open Space facilitators!

If you are interested in creating a Learning Organization... pick up a copy of this book!

This book really teaches you to unleash the power of group consciousness. I have already facilated several workshops using this method and the results are amazing.