There’s been a lot written already on consensus, so instead of re-writing, take a look at Starhawk’s posting on an overview of consensus.  What she doesn’t say is that consensus is a system of governance – in other words a way of making decisions in a group.

It is a method that focuses on access and inclusion of all voices. That means that it can be incredibly empowering, especially when there is time and space to include everyone. It can be incredibly frustrating when the group is too large or time is short or the pressure is too high to do such things.

It also means that participants have to be ready and willing to engage and listen to all those voices and opinions, stay present and speak their own truth while also moderating how much or often they speak up. And to be done well, it requires skilled facilitation (In fact I recommend that even participants have some facilitation training as training makes for great participants.)

And there has to be consent from the participants for facilitation and the ability to trust those facilitators. All of these things can make it hard to walk in off the streets to the movement and engage the process. It’s one of the reasons that democracy, representative or otherwise, is often favored in group decision-making: it’s easier to explain and do.  But that misses the points of inclusivity and access.

In other words, democracy keeps all voices from being heard.

Truth: sometimes that’s a good thing. If everyone needs to have a say in every decision, processes get bogged down and things are difficult to move. So in very large groups it can be a lot faster to just call for a vote. It’s fast, it’s decisive, it can meet most people’s needs.

But for sensitive decision, it’s often not enough. How do we create a space where everyone gets their needs met? I often hear people say that it’s not possible. But in consensus it actually is. We keep working on a solution until everyone can live with it. Not until everyone dances with joy, but everyone gets a say in the process and can really support the decision. In that way it’s a brilliant model. It’s great for groups that have a long-term investment in working together, creating community, forwarding goals of access and inclusion and making sure all voices are heard.

About consensus both why and overview of method: http://starhawksblog.org/?p=631

10 Common Mistakes in consensus by Tree Bressen: http://www.intellitics.com/blog/2011/10/13/tree-bressen-the-top-10-most-common-mistakes-in-consensus-process/

Resources on facilitation, conflict resolution and mediation: http://www.toolsforchange.org/resources/resources.html

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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

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It gives a great over view of what an unconference in the style I do is. All the other presenters at this Ignite evening were women and I took the opportunity to invite attendees to She’s Geeky the women’s only technology science, math and engineering conference that I founded that was next happening  at the end of January.

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This is how she describes the workshop:

Open Space is a dialogic method where one facilitator can convene from ten to 2000+ participants for dynamic, participant-driven dialogue. OS can be used for bringing together an entire company to highlight emergent issues and opportunities before strategic planning, generating ideas for product or program design, sharing resources and best practices, understanding each other across cultures, sharing knowledge across disciplines, conflict transformation, exchanging thought and experience about complex situations and engaging groups from small to large in seeing a full-systems perspective for their opportunities or issues. The facilitator’s role in OS is very different than for other dialogic methods – participants facilitate their own discussions, documentation and noting of linkages and common threads.

Join me for 2.5 days of mutual exploration as we share learning in and about Open Space. Together you will discuss and create a theme for an Open Space meeting, explore the issues and opportunities in your own work, reflect on how behavior change theory can inform our roles as facilitators, experience an Open Space, and really delve into all those elements of pre-work that are essential to the success of an Open Space event.

Everything from developing a theme to exploring invitation and outreach, design, planning, materials, variations, adaptations for cultural differences (for example in a non-readers environment or in a situation with rich power dynamics), how the site, food and other elements impact or enhance an event, how to include action planning as needed, ‘what-ifs’, ‘when not to’s', documentation and more.

Pricing – as always – is flexible – custom tailored to what you as an individual can contribute and afford.

For more information on content, schedule and pricing overview and to register,
Contact me directly at lisaheft@openingspace.net

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How do you go from blank wall to full wall.

If this goes well, you will have a very full agenda with amazing topics for conversation and presentation, build a coherent field of intention and understanding among those attending and with these two things, support community and action going forward out of the event.

What do you do to facilitate this process?

This post is long and detailed it does its best to support a person or team of people understanding step by step specifically what they should do in order. If you do nothing else do these two things:

1) Get everyone who proposes a session for the unconfernece to announce their session idea to the whole group.

2) Bring everyone together at the end of the day to share what happened.

They help facilitate the formation of a good energetic container/field for the conference by supporting people finding out what is going on during the unconference sessions and knowing more about what happened after.

STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS

Agenda Creation begins when the facilitator and other conveners gather everyone together.

This can be done in several ways:

• get on the loudspeaker and annouce that you will be starting the agenda creation process in 5 min
• ring a bell(s) that invite people to stop talking and sit in the opening circle
• facilitator and convener go around and ask everyone to take seats

After people are seated the facilitator can go through these steps:

1) Welcome everyone

2) Restate the convening topic or theme – why they are gathered?

3) Invite everyone to introduce themeslves in a way that makes sense for the gathering:

• a question “what makes you creative?”
• three words/tags about self or
• where are you from geographically organizationally
• Have a welcome and inviting space – support people reg

You must model the format and make sure that people are very crisp; for large groups you can have 150 people introduce themselves in 10 min.

4) Explain how the agenda will be created
“There is a blank grid here – in a few min i will invite those of you who want to lead a session to come forward and get one of these (holding it up) 8.5×11 pieces of paper and write on it (in the landscape direction) the name of your session and a description. These can be:

• conversations you want to have with others
• questions you want answered
• information you want to share/present
• a project you would like help on
• any number of forms

After you have written your session title, you will come forward to the microphone (or center of the circle) and announce the title of your session. I will then give you a piece of tape and you will go and place it on the agenda wall in the space/time slot that you choose.

5) Explain the shared norms for the day that are also posted around the space

“Before we make this agenda I want we have to some guidelines about how we will conduct ourselves today – how will this work?”

I am a big fan of the Open Space Principles and the Law of Two Feet that is intricately entwined with them. I recite these and elaborate on what they mean.

You could consider modifications to these, or some different norms, but setting norms of how people move about and share the space together are very helpful in making a day go well.

Share:

• when people post sessions that are similar, two conveners with similar topics are free to merge their sessions together, but it is up to them whether they choose to do so or not.
• that only the person who convened a session can move it about on the agenda wall. Others are free to “lobby” the convener to shift the time but they can’t move the session themselves.

6) Share the flow of the day time and space wise, talk about where the rooms/spaces are relative to where everyone is seated during the opening agenda creation.

Example “Spaces A and B are outside that door (pointing at door) and down the hall to the right. Spaces L-M are outside that door (pointing at a different door) and down the hall to the left. Spaces I-K are at these tables in the middle of this large rooom. Spaces C-H are found around the edges of this room.”

Our first session begins at 10:30 and we have hour long sessions with 15 min breaks. There are two sessions before lunch and three afterwards. You are free to post sessions during lunch but be mindful that you are doing this and having conversations that make sense to have over a meal.

We will close the day all together back here in the circle and go over what we learned sharing highlights, insights and next steps.

7) Talk about how documentation will be happening during the day

• Make sure people know the hashtag for Twitter, Flickr and blogging about the day.
• If you are hosting a documentation center with a person checking in notes, articulate that process
• if you have a wiki and are expecting people to post there, explain this
• If you are asking people to fill out 11×17 sheets after their sessions, articulate that and share where they should be posted

8 ) Ask if people have any questions. Answer questions respectfully.

9) Invite participants to come forward who have sessions to convene
a) “Come forward get a piece of 8.5×11 paper and a marker and to have them write down the session name. In a few min we will start announcing session topics”

I like to leave about 5 min for this to happen because people want to talk during it… once there are many people with sessions written on papers, then begin session announcements

b) Get those who are calling sessions to get in a line to one at a time announce the name of the session they want to host. This can be along one or two of the aisles of the circle. If there is a microphone, it can be handed from one to the next in line as they get to the center.

It is ok to allow session conveners to elaborate their session titles but make sure you as the facilitator keep them from giving long speeches. If what the purpose is not clear or full of acronyms you can ask them to clarify. Allow audience members to ask questions if they are confused about what the proposed session is supposed to be about.

c) Once they have announced a session, give the convener a piece of tape.
d) The conveners will go to the blank agenda wall and post the session name card on the time/space they want.

Watch the wall as it fills and encourage sessions to balance out in time/space, like if you notice that there are no sessions in the last time slot of the day, just name this and people will move sessions into that time slot.

DO NOT as the facilitator try to help or coordinate in a specific way who should put what where on the agenda wall. The participants will self organize to do this.

DO NOT limit the break out space areas – a good rule of thumb is that if you have 100 people you need to take the number of people attending and divide by 3. So 30 breakout time/spaces 5 time slots and 6 spaces. If these fill out think about your space layout and figure out where if need bee more breakouts can happen. This can be at different tables, in hallway nooks, outside. Notice on the “full” agenda wall up above there was more space added.

10) Invite shy people to come forward and post sessions on the wall
As the agenda begins to fill and there are fewer people with sessions to announce, interject and remind/invite those who have not yet heard a session that covers the issues/topics they want to hear about at the event, to come forward and post such a session on the agenda wall. Get them to annouce the session before giving them tape to post on the wall.

11) Moving participants on to the first session.
If you have 100+ people attending an unconference, one way to get people to move to the first session is to actually read out the topics proposed in the first time slot into the mic.

Example “In space A we have organic farming, in Space B we have getting Apache servers running, in space C we have standards for identity online, etc.”

I usually end this by saying “Have a great day, see you back here at 4pm for closing circle.”

Then the direct “facilitating” part of the day is done. You as the facilitator are still responsible for holding the space of the gathering for those gathered. This is an energetic way of being.

Don’t tell people when they should change sessions. They will do this on their own. It is best to leave “break time” between sessions – 15min is a good amount of time; this supports a buffer of shifting time.

12) Bring everyone back together at the end of the day
Like bringing people at the beginning of the day, this can be done by:

• get on the loudspeaker and announce that you will be starting the closing circle in 5 min
• ring a bell(s) that invite people to stop talking and sit in the closing circle
• facilitator and convener go around and ask everyone to take seats

Invite people to share what happened durring the day. If you have a wall of results, you can go through and ask someone from each session that happened to read that out.
Using “Popcorn style” for sharing highlights is another way. This is where the facilitator gets to play “Oprah” and solicit people sharing highlights.

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Last September I took a training with the founder of Innovation Games Luke Hohmann (to be a game facilitator) and it was amazing set of fun “games” to play with the users/customers of one’s products. Quite different then a focus group in terms of the kind of information that you get about how to shape/design your products. (wikipedia article – details all 12 games and information about selecting the appropriate game)

I know what you are asking how is playing games going to help with my products, workplace or process. I wondered this too….here is a simple example.

I explained one of them (Buy a Feature) this way at the Online Community Unconference – say you have a next generation set of features to build for your product – you have 10 potential features but only time to build a few of them – how do you prioritize/decide about which ones to put in the next release?

Buy a Feature is a game you can play to do this (and it is both online and face to face)

You bring in 10 current customers together and give them each $200 of play money. You give each of your features a cost totaling $3000-$4000 (one might be $100 (really easy to build) $500 (harder/more time) etc.) They must amongst themselves figure out how to spend their $2000 to buy a limited set of the 10 features. You could play this with several sets of customers and then gather information about what they want. It helps you make decisions about what to build AND it is fun for them to play the game of “buying” the features they want.

The conference is not limited to “just” innovation games but also includes other design and “serious” games.

• Design games: Offering collaborative design activities within a game format improves idea generation and communication among stakeholders. By shifting focus to the game, power relations and other factors that might hamper idea generation, are downplayed

• Serious games: Ranging from theater improvisation to interactive games technology within non-entertainment sectors, serious games have uses in education, government, health, military, science, corporate training, first responders, and social change

You don’t have to be an expert to attend – if you are just exploring these things we invite you along.

There have been a few companies in the identity space that have used these tools – I just can’t say who.

I am also happy to talk with folks if they are interested in using games to innovate and do better product design in the identity and social web space.

Here is the book if you are interested in learning more.

“Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play” (Luke Hohmann)

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Let’s assume that you are going to succeed at attracting 50-1000+ motivated, smart people from around the region or country to attend your conference, ok? As the convenor, you now have an amazing opportunity to engage and influence a large number of active and talented folks about an issue that is important to you. Inspiring speeches can energize attendees and spark new ideas, but that alone is not enough. There is nothing like active participation to prepare people to take what they have learned out into the world.

It covers a range of potential ways of including conversation and audience participation within ‘traditional’ conference formats.

Participatory Formats to put at the Middle or End of an informational presentation.

• Pause for Pairs
• Small Group Sharing
• Attendees Interview Each Other
• Panelist or Participant Fishbowl
• Panelist Circles

Participatory Formats to Supplement or Replace One-Way Presentations

• Storytelling
• World Cafe
• Representative Fishbowls
• Kinetic Spectrum (Spectrograom)
• Speed Dating
• Project Gallery (Speed Geeking)
• Appreciative Inquiry
• Open Space

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I think it is a good overview of the process covering how and why it works, in particular for technical communities.

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Another Game we played there was the Reverse Scavenger hunt. This is where your team has 5-10 min to collect 10 objects. Then the list of ‘objects’ is given to the teams. They must creatively ‘hack’ their objects to match the descriptions on the list. The three judges give out points to the best team for each item. At FooCamp the judges derived their list from the board of sessions.

This post was inspired by reading about the Citizen Summit at Citizen Agency. They played Half-Baked:

which is a really fun game where 4-5 person teams grab two random words, mash them together into a dot-com and then in about 5 minutes come up with a product, revenue model, marketing strategy, logo and tagline. Each team does a pitch to the ‘investors’ and a winner is chosen.

I am wondering if we could play this game with a specifically identity focus at the Internet Identity Workshop? We could use the IdentoLatin BuzzPhraser put together by Doc. That would certainly be fun.

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Going back up to the ‘unparodied’ real rules. I think that mandating participation makes people feel intimidated to come. I know at Ruby on Rails Camp last week there were guys who came and said as they announced their session in the mic that they had not planned on presenting until getting there. There were also guys who combined their session because of the agenda co-creation process at the beginning.

Self-worth is a huge issue in the society at large. Just showing up may be a big deal for someone (yes they should volunteer and contribute in some way to help make the space). FooCamp originated out of OpenSpace ideas and roots and history are important. This process is over 20 years old and is practiced by 1000s around the world.

It started from this question that Harrison Owen asked himself:

My question was a simple one. Was it possible to combine the level of synergy and excitement present in a good coffee break, with the substantive activity and results characteristic of a good meeting?

It is a deep question in a way- How do we combine two interesting phenomena together so that people are involved and feel alive an energized? If it is done right – then people will be participating. It does not have to be mandated.

Here are some more inspiring quotes from Working in Open Space about invitation and intentionality.

The invitation itself was very simple, probably just a page or two, maybe a short email or postcard, or even something posted on a bulletin board. It spoke plainly about what’s working, what’s possible, and/or what’s needed now in some area of real importance. It was clearly not an invitation to complain or even “solve problems,” but rather to co-create some dimension of the organization, the community, or the world that we all really want to be a part of. This doesn’t mean that it denied or in any way minimized the importance of existing problems, only that it really focused attention on our strengths and assets — and invited people to work together to create more of them.

The simple, clear, broad and open invitation process assures that the people who show up have real passion for the issue AND signals to them that the best outcomes are theirs to create. A good invitation lets everyone know, even those who can’t or won’t actually attend, that this meeting is intended to go beyond suggestions, beyond recommendations, beyond rubber-stamping, beyond past expectations. This meeting is for real responsibility, real learning, real action on the issue(s) at hand.

Open Space creates a co-created space in a shared space/time of agenda creation. It is a wonderful moment at the beginning before the wall is full.

At this moment, the facilitator is, quite possibly, the only one in the room who has absolutely no doubt whatsoever that this group of 12, 120 or 1200 is on the brink of filling that large, suspiciously empty wall with a detailed agenda that will keep everyone working, playing, and learning for the duration of the conference — on the brink of what most (at this point) would call the impossible. The sense of anticipation and energy is so high in the room that even the sponsors and planners of the event are a little edgy, and eager for the agenda to appear.

The power of Open Space:

Hailed for its utter simplicity — and it’s power, Open Space starts with open-minded leadership, an issue that really matters, and an invitation to co-create something new and amazing. What happens in the meetings is high learning, high play and high productivity, but is never pre-determined. And what emerges, over time, is a truly inviting organization, that will thrive in times of swirling change.

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