Open Space Technology: How One Law Runs the Whole Room

TL;DR

• The people in the room write the agenda on a blank wall in the first hour, then choose which sessions to join.
• Four principles, one law. The law of two feet is what makes the rest work, because nobody is trapped.
• Owen’s lower limit is about 20 people; groups of 400 work very well.
• The facilitator does far less than anyone expects: open the space, then get out of the way.
• It fails when you already know the answer, when attendance is compulsory, and when nobody captures the output.

Open Space Technology sits behind almost every self-organising event you have been to, including most unconferences. It gets misread as a meeting with no plan. The plan is a theme, a circle of chairs, a blank wall and a law. The rest belongs to whoever turned up.

What is Open Space Technology?

It is a format where participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel sessions around a single theme. Open Space World, the community’s main reference, describes it working with groups of 5 to 2000 or more.

Owen’s guide lists four requirements: a clear and compelling theme, an interested and committed group, time and a place, and a leader. Detailed advance agendas, he writes, are usually counterproductive.

Conditions matter more than mechanics. Open Space works best where the work is complex, the people and ideas are diverse, the potential for conflict is high, and the deadline was yesterday. If none of that is true, pick something else.

Where did Open Space Technology come from?

It came out of a coffee break in 1985. Harrison Owen, an Episcopal priest whose academic background was myth, ritual and culture, had run two conventional symposiums and heard the same verdict twice: the excitement was in the unplanned breaks.

So the third had no agenda. Eighty-five people sat in a circle in Monterey and built a three-day programme in two and a half hours. The only facilitator in evidence, Owen notes, disappeared after a few hours.

It spread without an owner. There is no patent or trademark, which is why it turns up under a dozen names in more than 140 countries.

The agile world picked it up at Agile/XP Universe in 2002, with the first Agile Open Space in Belgium in 2005. In the UK, Improbable’s free Devoted and Disgruntled has run on it for two decades.

What are the four principles and the one law?

The four principles are deliberately obvious, and that is the point:

1. Whoever comes is the right people.
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
3. Whenever it starts is the right time.
4. When it is over, it is over.

Some practitioners add a fifth, “wherever it happens is the right place”. Owen is honest about what any of them do: they work more descriptively than prescriptively, because people do these things anyway.

The one law carries the weight. The law of two feet, also called the law of mobility, says that if you are neither learning nor contributing, you use your feet and go somewhere you can. Open Space World’s phrasing puts responsibility where it belongs: only you know when you are learning and contributing as much as you can.

The law breeds two characters. People who hop between sessions are bumblebees, because they cross-pollinate. The ones who sit out in the corridor are butterflies, creating the quiet centres where a random conversation starts.

The agenda wall and the village market place

Owen’s mechanics are low-tech and worth copying. A circle of movable chairs, an empty centre, a long blank wall, no tables. The wall has to take masking tape and be long enough for the group to stand in front of it no more than three or four deep. Two mechanisms then do the work.

The community bulletin board. Anyone with an issue writes a short title on a large sheet, stands up, says what it is, signs it and tapes it to the wall. Proposing it means convening it. Owen’s script is blunt: if your issue is not on the wall, there is one person to complain to.

The village market place. Everyone walks the wall and signs up. Proposers add a time and place, clashes get negotiated between them, and sessions merge.

Chris Corrigan, a leading practitioner, suggests a room that holds double your expected attendance in theatre style, so the circle and the breakouts both fit it. These sessions behave nothing like scheduled breakout sessions: attendance is voluntary and visible.

What size of group does Open Space Technology suit?

About 20 people at the bottom end, several hundred at the top. Owen puts the lower limit at roughly 20: below that you lose the diversity that makes the interchange worth having. Groups of 400 work very well.

My rule for a corporate room: under about 25 people you need a good chair and a short list, not an agenda wall. Over 150 it gets stronger, not weaker. Most engagement techniques do the reverse, because they were designed for twelve people in a training room rather than for a hall.

What does the facilitator actually do?

Almost nothing, visibly. The ideal is a facilitator who is fully present and invisible, holding the space rather than managing the conversations. Corrigan puts it more sharply: the facilitator is neither seen nor heard, but their presence is felt.

The job is really four things. Set the theme and the time. Open the space, which takes 20 minutes and is the hardest part. Let go, to the point where Owen recommends leaving the room for a coffee once the market place runs. Then tend the space: he describes picking up cups and re-taping agenda sheets.

One bit of crowd control. When somebody turns their session into a speech, you do not challenge them. You remind the room about the law of two feet, and Owen’s observation is that egomaniacs get the picture when everybody leaves.

When does Open Space Technology not work?

When you already know the answer. Owen is unusually direct: if the present state and the future position are crystal clear, along with all the steps in between, Open Space is a waste of time and will frustrate everyone. Rolling out a new system is training, not Open Space.

Three more failure modes matter.

• Compulsory attendance. Owen insists participation is voluntary and informed. Involuntary, uninformed participation, he writes, can become destructive.
• The opening favours the confident. Adrian Segar’s critique: topics get proposed by people happy to stand up in front of a crowd, so sessions tilt to a vocal minority while introverts, 25 to 50% of the population, stay quiet.
• A short day with no record. Usable documentation is difficult under two days, and Owen’s five-hour floor is, he admits, cutting it close.

How do you capture the output so the day leads somewhere?

During the event, not after it. Each convener types up their session, Owen prints each report as it arrives and hangs it on the wall, and people leave with the proceedings instead of waiting six months.

Owen lists five promises a good Open Space keeps: every issue on the table, every issue discussed as far as anyone cared to, a full written record in everyone’s hands, all issues ranked in priority order, and focal issues with next steps named. Ranking is the step most organisers skip, and the one that turns a good day into a plan. Even with hundreds of people, that report can be focused and prioritised in a few hours.

Open Space, unconferences, World Cafe and Liberating Structures

The difference is theme and output. Foo Camp and BarCamp are participant-driven, but neither is organised around a pre-set theme or aimed at solving a problem, which is what corporate sponsors want. For the social version, read the unconference guide; for conversation at tables, World Cafe; for a menu, Liberating Structures.

Opening the space is the one bit that needs a host

I have hosted 800+ events, and the pattern holds everywhere. Professional adults take part when the format removes the risk of looking foolish. Cringe, not reluctance, kills participation.

The energy in a room is a curve, and the first 20 minutes of an Open Space is that risk, concentrated. Somebody has to explain four principles and a law without sounding like a cult, hold the silence while a room stares at a blank wall, and get the first brave person out of their chair.

So lower the cost of going first. Delegates can send topic ideas from their phones through RoomReader, the live Q&A software I built and include with hosting, so the quiet expert in row nine does not have to perform to get an issue on the wall.

Planning an Open Space day, or a fixed morning with an open afternoon? If you want someone to open the space and then stay out of the way, see conference facilitation, then send the agenda or check availability at hello@conferencehost.uk.