Hi all!
Thanks for kicking off the planning Anna and thanks for continuing the conversation Zak and starting the issue tracking and announcements Hobson.
Maybe we should start another thread for this, but I was brainstorming some open spaces ideas recently and wanted to dump them here.
I met someone deeply involved in the agile world through a mutual friend recently and we talked quite a bit about communication at tech conferences.
We discussed some strategies agile conferences use to get people meeting each other (determining topics to discuss in a group by using a Trello-style to-discuss, discussing, discussed system) and we talked about our views of open spaces. He noted that talks often draw people away from open spaces if they're hosted at the same time and we debated the merits of having dedicated open space days/times vs shared talk and open space times.
Some things that I've been thinking about:
- Sharing a fairly curated ideas list for open spaces that have been popular/successful in the past and open spaces we'd like to see folks put up in the future
- Brainstorming and sharing alternative open space formats with potential open space planners (e.g. quiet room, yoga, sticker exchange, or an open space where people hold 2 minute conversations with a person and then rotate musical chair style)
- Making a "how to run a successful open space" cheat sheet with things like recommendations for giving a voice to attendees, taking shared notes, and exchanging contact information with each other and considering continuing the discussion online in a structured way
Many of the things I've been thinking about involve more active recommendations/nudging from us to encourage a particular feel/vibe from the open spaces. Thoughts on this?