Kaliya and I have been working with the Mass Technology Leadership Council. For the past few years they have been doing an unConference on Innovation in the Boston area.
MassTLC uses a combination of Open Space Technology and hybrid one-on-one expert meetings to create innovative spaces for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other funders, start ups and general tech innovation.
Open Space Technology has thousands of practitioners worldwide and is often used to generate change in organizational cultures. The agenda is generated live, the day of the event, by the attendees, with support from a facilitation team. This real time process means that the topics discussed and presented are live and fresh, coming directly from attendees in the current environment.
When MassTLC was trying to conceive of how to organize the 1-on-1 breakout sessions, they wanted to pre-organize the sessions, with entrepreneurs requesting specific experts, and trying to work out logistics around who would meet who where in advance. The challenge in doing this, identified by the unconference.net team, was that some of the experts likely to not attend at the last minute. The question became: how do you manage those logistics?
The solution was to draw inspiration from Open Space Technology and its “day-of” agenda craetion. When experts arrive in the morning, they get a card with space for entrepreneurs to sign up to meet with them 1-on-1 in clear time slots, using available and marked locations.
When the entrepreneurs arrived, they are be given a corresponding number of stickers with their names and could then sign up to talk to any of the experts who had posted their availability for meetings. No one was left out and no one was over booked.
Entrepreneurs were given a booklet ahead of time with names and bios of all the experts intending to attend, and their expertise. This helped the entrepreneurs make some choices in advance, limiting the logistical difficulty of clogging up the agenda walls and supporting making choices for same day connections while creating potential for future connections as well.
Design highlights
• Self organization: Real time self-organization within a structure which gives freedom to the attendees
• Structure: Appearance of being “unstructured,” but not actually formless so that attendees and experts have support in that freedom
• Development: Changing and upgrading an intact system which supports staff and organizers in having confidence in collaboration.
• Choice: Self-organizing attendees creating useful connections, making competent choices
• Accountability: Attendees take clear responsibility for themselves within the space freeing up both organizers and attendees
• Clear communication: Clear and common signaling mechanisms make the space cohesive and the ability to flow between ideas and sessions
• Innovation: A change in brand was not necessary, just updating methods generated openness which creates consistency for staff
Facilitating Chicago Bioneers
Chicago Bioneers is an affiliate of a longstanding conference, Bioneers based out of Northern California. This first Chicago event pulled in 700 people for a densely packed 3 days of talks and workshops.
As this was an open space within an existing conference with a dense schedule, we didn’t do the usual open space opening and closing. We knew participants were going to come to the open space randomly without staying from start to finish, so we had to provide enough simplicity that anyone walking in could jump right in. We used simple signage to support self-organizing. And we actively engaged with people exploring the space and joined into sessions, helping to take notes or explain the process to small groups.
The Marketplace was highly visible from the entry to the space, which was position next to the main stage of activity sharing a large room with the bookstore. Also, book signings were held in the area, which helped bring visibility to the space. It is so important at an open space within an existing conference that foot traffic brings people serendipitously to the space.
The challenge of running open space for this event, in hindsight, is that so many of the attendees were students eager to hear a speaker or participate in a workshop. The open space format was also new to many of the attendees. We provided a brief open space intro to the conference organizer to present from the main stage. We encouraged speakers and their handlers to invite people to gather for open space for further discussion of issues. A briefing on open space was listed in the conference program. And, we provided basics about open space to the website, so people could understand what to expect before coming in.
We hope that the second year (November 1-3, at Roosevelt University in Chicago), our more experienced participants lead more action groups that use the open space area to convene for forward movement together.