The Un-Convention

The National Youth Workers Convention used Open Space Technology to open up dialogue with attendees.

By Kate Burton

This past fall, the National Youth Workers Convention (NYWC) tried something new at its three conventions: In Los Angeles, Cincinnati and Atlanta, a four-hour chunk of each convention was devoted to a process called Open Space Technology. Attracting between 2,000 and 3,000 attendees to each city, NYWC wanted to balance its nearly 40 years of history with new techniques to encourage meaningful dialogue. While the sessions were being prepared last summer, Rejuvenate spoke with Mark Matlock, vice president of event content for the event management and publishing company Youth Specialties. Acting both as meeting planner and facilitator for the Open Space sessions, at the time, Matlock thought Open Space would “either be the best thing we’ve ever done or an absolute failure.” Now that all three sessions are complete, we caught up with Matlock to see how it all played out.

Open Space is a meeting process where attendees set the agenda. With no speakers, no programming, and nothing more than one pre-determined focus question, leaders open the floor to attendees to propose ideas for discussion and organize themselves into groups to exchange ideas about topics of interest. “We believe the people who attend our conferences are all experts in their own ways and this is an ideal way to leverage all that expertise,” says Matlock. For a more complete explanation of Open Space techniques and the challenges Matlock faced leading up to the conventions, see “Open Space” in the August 2009 issue of Rejuvenate or at RejuvenateMeetings.com/open-space.

How did you prepare attendees for the Open Space experience?
We included information about it in all our marketing materials in all different kinds of media. We explained it on our website and even did a couple of webinars on it to further explain the idea. I also did some interviews with a couple of popular bloggers so they could help get the word out. We basically laid it on the table and told attendees this might be the greatest thing ever or it might be the biggest flop ever — but either way, you want to be here and be a part of it.

Was that enough? Did attendees really understand what it was by the time they got there?
Not really. One big change I would make if I did it again is that I wouldn’t call it “Open Space,” even though that’s how it’s known in the industry. A lot of people misunderstood it from the beginning and thought it was just free time in the middle of the convention for them to process information. We had some really funny evaluations — one person told us how much he loved going to the beach during the Open Space “free time.”

What kind of feedback did you get from attendees leading up to the sessions?
We heard a very mixed response from the youth pastors as we were getting ready for the sessions. Some people thought it was a really exciting idea, and told us that was one of the reasons they like YS — that we’re always willing to try new things boldly and to keep our events right at the edge. But there was another element that kept saying they didn’t understand what we were trying to do. They thought it would be one big gripe session or a “sharing of ignorance.” And then there was a third group that just couldn’t get their heads around what was going to happen when we all showed up; they weren’t negative or positive, just puzzled.

With all those different responses, how were you feeling as you prepared to lead the events?
Going into the first session in L.A., I couldn’t even sleep at night. I was really nervous walking into it. I didn’t know how many people would come or what would happen once they got there. We were putting all our confidence in the attendees themselves and believing that it could be one of the most significant things we could do together as a community. But the negative feedback was really frustrating and I started to wonder if maybe the community didn’t believe in themselves enough to let this happen. Some of this was complicated by the fact that our organization was undergoing several large changes at the same time so at each of the conventions, we had that to contend with too.

How did you structure the sessions?
In each city, it was a four-hour session. After the opening set-up, people gathered in circles for roughly an hour each. We rang a bell at the hour point, which let people know they could change if they wanted to, but some groups wanted to go longer than an hour and that was fine. And some people made connections with each other in the circles, so they would go off to the side to continue to develop their ideas. Of course, throughout the sessions, there’s the “law of mobility” — it’s the only “law” in the room and it’s pretty simple: If you’re not giving, contributing or learning where you are, you need to get up and go to another circle. Some people had a hard time with that at first. It feels “rude” by most standards, but by the second round, people were more comfortable moving around when it made sense to do that.

Can you describe that first session?
We explained what was going to happen and gave them the basic ground rules. Then we opened up the agenda wall and it was the moment of truth. There was a long pause — and then one person got up and then another and then the whole room went crazy with people moving around. The ideas started to flow and for a minute, I even worried that there were going to be too many ideas. I wondered if there were enough people in the room to support all the ideas. And the truth was, there weren’t. Some ideas got more critical mass than others. You just don’t know what’s going to stick when the ideas are thrown out.

How was attendance at the sessions?
I’d say we probably had about one-third of the total attendees show up for the sessions, which is a little less participation than if we had held seminars at that time. Besides some people thinking it was free time, the exhibit hall was open while the sessions were going on. So exhibitors weren’t able to attend and some attendees chose to go to the exhibit hall instead of the sessions. If I had my way, I would have shut down the exhibit hall and asked the vendors to join us. I think they would have had a lot to share and also could have learned a lot.

Were there any surprises along the way?
We do seminars and conferences and think that our attendees are putting all these great ideas into practice. But when we got into circles to discuss their issues, it became clear that the speed of learning and adoption is slower than the dissemination of ideas. Sometimes the content just doesn’t penetrate. We were blown away by how many people in the circles were struggling with things that had been out there for so long.

Did most of the attendees stay for the entire four hours?
We had some loss of members from hour to hour. Not everyone realized it was going to run as long as it did so they had other commitments or meetings scheduled. We also had some people come and look and leave after the first segment, especially in L.A., the first city we did it in. But that happened less in Cincinnati and Atlanta.

What was different?
The second time we went in, we had all the confidence in the world. Now we knew it could work. We didn’t modify very much, but now we had more confidence and were able to explain it all better.

Were there any other changes made in response to the first session in L.A.?
In L.A., we interviewed people during the process about their experiences. We took those interviews and made a one-minute promo video. We put it up on YouTube and also used it at the next two conventions to heighten excitement. Right from the start, we could feel a different climate going into those sessions — attendees seemed a lot less tentative and more excited.

Did the same topics come up in all three cities?
There were some topics that popped up in all the cities, but even then, there was uniqueness in how they were phrased and which ones received more energy. It made it really clear how we are not living in a one-size fits all kind of society. Despite the massive globalization of communication, there are still local interests and niches that are hard to hit on with a general approach. In Atlanta, for example, the circle on reaching youth in a multicultural context was huge and there were even people standing around the outside of the circle. But that wasn’t a hot topic in the other cities.

What kind of follow-up did you do after the events?
We collected all the notes from the various circles and had them transcribed. We’re currently creating a big wiki online so attendees can continue to modify and add to it. We’re a little behind; we wanted to get that up a few weeks after each event. We didn’t want attendees to go home with it; we wanted it to resurface a few weeks after they got home as a reminder and re-engagement so it wasn’t just something they experienced and then put on a shelf.

Were there any extra expenses involved in creating the Open Space set-up?
That’s an interesting point because a lot of attendees assumed we’d made these choices as a cost-savings measure, but we didn’t really save any money. It was pretty much a wash in terms of expenses. We saved on some aspects, but that was set off by paying more for other aspects. When you do an event on this scale, you need a lot of people there helping; people shuffling chairs around, people to point attendees in the right direction, people to get the agenda wall set up, people to collect notebooks. It didn’t really make any impact financially.

Now that you’ve gone through the whole process, what are your thoughts about Open Space as a meeting process?
In certain communities, when we have ideas and practices we need to share, this can be the most effective way to get that done. There can be such a big gap between the experts, who often don’t do anything in the field any more, and the people out in the field doing things — and those things are changing so fast. Open Space revealed the true speed of change in a way that other processes can’t. It also allowed us to go deeper into the true nature of issues than a general session would have been able to address. If you want to put something together that’s in the moment and addresses what’s on attendees’ minds right now, there is nothing else that can accomplish that like Open Space.