Open Space Meetings

Open Space is an approach for hosting meetings and conferences focused on a specific and important purpose or task - but beginning without any formal agenda, beyond the overall purpose or theme. In a Transitition Newcastle Open Space meeting the overarching purpose is "moving Newcastle towards sustainability and resilience".

Open Space is where you can bring your ideas, problems and projects and find other people to help you with them, and where you can help others with their ideas, problems and projects with your skills, time, energy and ideas. An old Indian saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Come along and get your toes in the water. (It feels great!)

You can check out when and where the next one is here. You can get more information about current projects at the bottom of this page. Notes from previous meetings can be found here.

Typically, a meeting runs as follows:

We start with a brief introduction of the Open Space process, the theme or purpose of the meeting, and a description of the available session times and places (layed out on a grid on a whiteboard).

Then anyone can propose session topics about a project, issue or idea they care about. They will be the convenor for that topic in the meeting. The convenor of the session topic briefly describes the topic to everyone, then places their topic title and their name in one of the available session slots. The convenor of a topic needs to go to any topic they have posted.

Once everyone has posted the topics they want to discuss the meeting breaks into sessions. Anyone can attend any session, but must follow the Law Of Two Feet: If at any time you find yourself in a situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet, and go someplace else. This leads to three ways of participating:

• the Bumble Bee is someone who moves between sessions and may cross-pollinate ideas and info between groups;
• the Butterfly stays out of any sessions and has chance encounters/conversations with others that can sometimes become important kernels of ideas that are taken back tothe  sessions; and
• the [insert cute animal name here] stays in one place/topic for the whole session.

At the conclusion of a session the people in it can make arrangements to meet later to further pursue the idea or topic and any actions that were decided to be taken.

Once all the sessions are finished the meeting is wrapped up by someone (usually the convenor) from each topic briefly outlining key points from the discussion and any actions to be taken. Minutes (or the main points) from each topic are usually collated and emailed to all attendees of the meeting.

Open Space is guided by four principles:

1. Whoever comes is the right people: You don't need the CEO and 100 people to get something done, you need people who care.
2. Whenever it starts is the right time: Spirit and creativity do not run on the clock.
3. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have: Once something has happened, it's done - and no amount of fretting, complaining or otherwise rehashing can change that. Move on.
4. When it's over, it's over: We never know how long it will take to resolve an issue, once raised, but that whenever the issue or work or conversation is finished, move on to the next thing. Don't keep rehashing just because there's 30 minutes left in the session. Do the work, not the time.

At the heart of Open Space are passion and responsibility. Without passion, enthusiasm for an idea will soon wane, and without responsibility, there is risk that ideas will never move forward

Here's a video describing Open Space:

Don't forget to come along to the next Transition Newcastle Open Space Meeting!