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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Our increasing digitality means that we will increasingly be forced to come face to screen with the various dimensions and complexities of Digital Death.
Held in the inspiring setting of the Tropenmuseum’s exhibition Death Matters, this conference will be primarily concerned with provoking discourse around the social, cultural and practical implications of Death in the Digital world.
Thus stimulating a reconsideration of how death, mourning, memories and history are currently being augmented in our technologically mediated society.
‘We hardly know what life is how can we hope to understand death?’ -Chinese sage Confucius (fifth century BC) More…

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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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The first is the Internet Identity Workshop: http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com/ October 18-20, 2011 in Mountain View, CA.

The second is Friday, October 28th, 2011 in Boston, MA for the Mass Technology Leadership Council:  http://www.masstlc.org.

Two different events and two sides of the country. If you’ve been thinking about running an unConference, we invite you to come on out and watch us work. Contact us, or leave us a comment for more information.

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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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• unConferencing: How to prepare to attend an unConference.

Organizing An Unconference? look at these posts:

• Open Space, what happens, why does it work.
• How to DIY Unconference
• Introduction to Open Space for ITU-T – slide show and 4 page PDF
• Unconferences and Money
• How to Facilitation Agenda Creation Step by Step
• If it has a pre-set agenda it is not an unConference
• Questions about Unconferences

unConference Methods:

• UnPanel – Fishbowl Dialogue
• Uncovering diverse opinions – Spectrogram
• Community Mapping
• Ice Breaker – A strong wind blows
• Introductions for 200 in 10 min - how to

My Reviews of unConferences:

• Making Transparency Camp Better

Media Coverage of unConferences:

• Welcome to the Unconference:Why more industry associations and trade groups are letting members organize their own free-form “unconferences”. Inc Magazine December ’09/January ’10 Print Edition. This covers an event that Kaliya designed and facilitated for the Mass Technology Leadership Council.
• Cover of Convene Magazine, December 2008
• Mashup Camp in the San Jose Mercury News
• Marketplace (radio show) Convers Unconferences (badly)
• Where the Next Steve Jobs will be – at an unconference? on Biz 2.0 blog
• (Gender Biased) Newsweek Article on Unconferences

Learn more about Kaliya’s work

• Design and Facilitation – Event Services

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I took this workshop from Lisa few years after I started facilitating Open Space technology at unconferences. It was well worth doing and I highly recommend it.

Here is how she describes the method and her 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 issues and opportunities in your own work with groups, 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 if needed, ‘what-ifs’, ‘when not to’s', documentation, sustainability of ideas, relationships and actions post-event, 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 her directly at: lisaheft@openingspace.net

Lisa Heft, Consultant, Facilitator, Educator at Opening Space Fellow, Columbia University’s Center for International Conflict Resolution Adjunct Faculty, Sonoma State University Organization Development Program President, Open Space Institute US

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Here is the punch line …

I have news for everyone who thinks they are going to an unconference or camp by going to Gov 2.0 Camp LA. They are going to a REGULAR CONFERENCE that happens to be organized at the last minute.

I was looking for:

• list of attendees who had signed up
• a clear articulation of the method(s) that would be used
• who would be facilitating
• a list of potential topics that registrants to the event had put forward as they registered

These are the things that I use to decide whether or not to attend an unconference event – not finding any of this information I decided not to plan to attend.

I looked at the website early on and couldn’t figure out how they were actually organizing the event.

• Would it be run as a Bar Camp where there isn’t a facilitator and people just sort of wander in and post sessions on a wall and there is no shared articulation of how people move through space. A weak closing with the energy just kinda fading off.
• Would it use “Open Space Technology” with a facilitator that supports the agenda creation process with everyone announcing their sessions to the whole room in the morning and explaining the principles of open space and law of 2 feet, encourage a range of formats including discussions about topics, and asking questions along with the usual fair of presentations. Open Space Technology also includes a closing where everyone shares highlights from the day.
• Would there be a documentation center to support intensive notes collection that is part of part of the Open Space Technology method or applied in a camp style format.
• Would it be a “pseudo-camp” where the organizers say it is a camp but then there is a pre-selection process of what sessions will happen. This can happen innocently enough by just putting up a wiki and saying we are scheduling the event ahead of time here on this wiki OR with organizers asking for proposals to be submitted and having them voted on.

Returning to the site I found what I feared would be the case it was a pseudo-camp there was a list of “speakers” this statement of how the agenda would be created.

Gov 2.0 LA is a camp-style unconference. Participants will shape the agenda. Rather than spend Camp time creating the agenda, we’re going to create it here, on this site. Here’s how. The Planning Committee has come up with themes around which sessions will be organized. They are:

• Language & Gov2.0
• Women in Technology
• Road Blocks & Barrier Breakers
• State & Local
• The Policy Pickle
• Community Care
• Gov2Gov
• Happy Campers

For each theme there was a page that described it with several good questions their is this statement:

If you would like to submit a speaker/panel submission, please describe what you will talk about, what organization you are representing, the format you are proposing, and how your proposal maps to the Camp themes. Creativity is encouraged!

All submissions for speakers/panels must be uploaded here no later than midnight EST on January 23, 2010. Voting by the Community and space availability will determine if your session is accepted. Voting closes at midnight EST January 30, 2010. The final Camp schedule will be posted no later than February 1, 2010.

The “committee” will then be making the schedule and posting on the site here.

I have news for everyone who thinks they are going to an unconference or camp they aren’t it is A REGULAR CONFERENCE that happens to be organized at the last minute.

It will be interesting to see if they do mix “unconference formats” (that is participant driven sessions developed on site in real time) with the formal regular conference pre-planning they have done.

If they parallel track these two styles it will not be good. Pre-planned and live-real-time the day of planned sessions can be mixed in an event but only if they are serialized – that is having “all” the pre-planned sessions in the morning and “all” the live-real-time the day of sessions in the afternoon.

Update: It seems they are not having any times/spaces for sessions to be proposed the day of the event live by the attendees. It is definitely ”just a conference”

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The goal of the event is talk about Open Space with other experienced Open Space facilitators. Open Space is the primary method that I use in my unconference practice. I am most interested in talking about other methods in conjunction with open space and how they are applied.

• In the session so far I have gained clarity on the spectrum of Open Space use.
• Within a sub-section of the organization – a department
• For an Organization
• For an Organization and a few companies
• For a network of companies/organizations/people engaging with a complex topic/problem
• For an organization having a “conference”
• For public engagement by government with experts
• For public engagement around a set of problems

The two that are highlighted is where my work doing unconferences is mostly.

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