On the last morning, things started a bit slowly, owing to late nights and the cumulative effects of lots of working and learning, oh yes, and perhaps eating and drinking over these last few days.
Morning News conversation went quite long. Included inside of that, we “re-opened” the space for new “action” sorts of topics — things that needed to be started with some clear next steps, or conversations that wanted to be finished before we left. After that slow start, the room really buzzed with the action groups that I finally called back together a bit later than scheduled. The closing circle focused on “What did we love about this conference.” Those thoughts were blogged live, via wi-fi connection. The rest of the proceedings are getting filled out here. Already people are beginning to look at repeating in Chicago, and also in Rio, Uganda, and Los Angeles.
One of the most amazing dimensions of the three-day meeting is that with 40 people in the room, working all day in dozens of breakouts, we used only one flipchart pad. Most of that use was by me in setting up the room for the opening on day one. Because we have an active online workspace and lots of laptops with wi-fi capacity, almost all of the work was captured and will continue to be processed in the online space, much of it posted in places other than the main “proceedings” repository, as well. More than any other Open Space meeting I’ve ever facilitated, this meeting and this work really is not going to end.
More and more, this high level of performance is possible in almost any working community and organization!