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GABRIELA ENDER
OpenSpace-Online Real-Time Methodology
To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.
—R. Buckminster Fuller
After SARS: Coping in the New Health-Care Normal
In 2003, the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) realized that nurses all over the large province were showing symptoms of “SARS Stress Disorder,” which is similar to posttraumatic stress disorder. This understanding prompted the RNAO to organize an OpenSpace-Online® Conference to provide opportunities for conversations by nurses in “real-time” about the theme: “After SARS: Coping in the New Health-Care Normal.”
The discussions were rich, informative, and highly productive. The nurses used the conference to share their compelling stories, dialogue about the meaning of their experiences, and to make recommendations about how to effectively manage future outbreaks of diseases like SARS. The extensive OpenSpace-Online documentation of all discussions and results was used by RNAO to plan professional development activities to support nurses and to inform the RNAO’s report on the nursing experience with SARS for the Ontario government. In addition, comments from participants indicated that the conference helped nurses with their personal healing journey and enhanced the reputation of RNAO as a health-care leader.
Frequently Asked Questions
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF OPENSPACE-ONLINE?
The general purpose of the OpenSpace-Online methodology is to enable organizations to consciously act as “Lifelong Learning Organizations,” and to empower interest and work groups to independently cocreate the future for the greater good of society and the whole planet by overcoming the limitations of time and space. Moreover, the purpose of this method is to enable completely new participative collaboration processes to link multifaceted face-to-face and online activities in a highly complementary manner. The completely self-contained Internet method OpenSpace-Online is based on the philosophy of Open Space Technology and on the basic assumption that the best solutions can be found in one’s “own system.”
The Internet method was developed to encourage respectful, open, and goal-oriented collaboration that enables autonomous, fast, and ongoing work about important questions or issues, priorities, and action steps across distances. This virtually led real-time method is setting new innovation standards for global collaboration and change in business, community, education, health-care, and governmental settings.
WHEN, WHERE, AND HOW IS IT USED?
The easy-to-use conferencing system makes it possible for sponsors and change facilitators to quickly organize and for participants to work together without online moderators in a highly productive and liberated manner. OpenSpace-Online can be used for various goals, themes, and user groups via the Internet or Intranet at any time. It is an excellent approach if “High Passion, High Concentration, and High Play” are desired in order to enable valuable dialogues across distances, and to achieve results and agreements immediately recorded for further work. Once the organizer(s) have defined the scope, objectives, and the title of the OpenSpace-Online event, they are ideally positioned to compose the invitation, and generate interest in it. The method is applied in either time-limited single events or continuing, “endless” team or community processes in worldwide learning and collaboration contexts (figure 1).
Figure 1. Single and Continuing OpenSpace-Online Events
Figure 2. OpenSpace-Online Enables All-Embracing Participatory Architectures
The OpenSpace-Online methodology makes it possible for internal and external meta-facilitators to design individual All-Embracing Participatory Architectures™ (APA, figure 2) consciously linking different participatory communication and collaboration methods, concepts, and activities across time (real-time and asynchronous), across space (face-to-face and online), across multiple stakeholders and organizations (internal and external), across disciplines and branches, and across time and distances in a highly complementary and innovative manner. Sponsors and meta-facilitators of APAs put the human beings in the center; they open the space for the entire process; and they support mutual learning, appreciative cooperation, proactive change, and transparent organizational development. They foster further cocreative work and appropriate implementation of results.
HOW DOES IT WORK? WHAT IS THE FLOW OR PROCESS?
OpenSpace-Online is a high-encoded (448 Bit) software system that makes it possible for five to 125 persons to work together in real time. The meetings can be scheduled to be from two to eight hours in length. Neither organizers nor participants are required to have prior knowledge or technical expertise. In order to participate, users only need to be interested in the conference theme. Participants use a basic Internet connection on a standard computer that has been loaded with the OpenSpace-Online software (figure 3).
Figure 3. OpenSpace-Online Methodology
The text-based technology guides all participants through successive phases as follows: opening circle, creating a shared agenda, discussing topics in various sessions, café talks and private one-to-one conversations, summarizing the topic sessions, prioritizing topics and planning for next actions or steps, and closing circle. No external online moderator is needed because the virtual facilitator, “Comoso,” guides all participants through the conference. The participants themselves are the experts who bring shared interests in the theme, knowledge about various topics, and ideas for new solutions. At the end of each conference, every participant receives an extensive conference book at the press of a button. The report provides an ideal foundation for further work. It contains all generated content, results, arrangements, and contact data made during the meeting. It can be used immediately, in either digital or printed form.
Table of Uses
Typical Setting(s) |
Brief Description |
Length of Project |
Organizations: Professional associations, stake-holder groups in businesses or corporations, colleges or universities, churches, nonprofit or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), governmental agencies, online communities, virtual teams Geographic Locations: Neighborhood or community, town, city, country, province, state, nation, and global network |
In general, users around the world share the same desire to address the following: • Working on topics with a decision time of yesterday • Building on the ideas and experience of the “whole system” • Developing, expanding, and evaluating internal and external relations • Supporting the cocreative energy of other online and face-to-face activities • Providing a basis for ongoing, continued work • Fast results and recorded documentation • Easy-to-use online tools, which have to meet high data security • Contributing to conservation of natural resources • Reducing or eliminating travel expenses • Providing alternatives to time and space limitations |
Events can be scheduled for 2–8 hours with or without action planning and can include 5–125 people. Different criteria lead to individual event settings (duration, group size, variant). Two typical options regarding length are: • 2- to 4-hour meetings: Most existing work groups or teams regularly meet once a week or monthly • 3- to 6-hour conferences: Mostly public events that involve a varying number of participants |
About the Author
Gabriela Ender ([email protected]) invented the OpenSpace-Online Method after 30 years of experience in entrepreneurial management, systems-oriented organizational development, and change facilitation. In 1999, she experienced a strong and very clear vision of a revolutionary, virtually facilitated, real-time meeting methodology. Since 2002, Gabriela and her team have transformed that vision into reality. In 2003, she was the first female entrepreneur, selected by Berlin Partner (Capital Marketing of Berlin) to receive the annual “Founder Award.” In 2006, the World E-Gov Forum and PoliticsOnline selected Gabriela Ender and OpenSpace-Online as one of the Global Top 20 individuals, organizations, and companies having the greatest impact on changing the world of Internet and politics. After three weeks of voting by people around the world, she received the “Top 10 World Changer 2006” Award.
Where to Go for More Information
REFERENCES
Ender, Gabriela. “Having Its Seeds in ‘Feeling Good’—Introduction into ‘Open Space.’” Stadt und Gemeinde—DStGB AKTUELL (2000). German Association of Towns and Municipalities (DStGB), Bonn, Germany.
———. Real-Time Conferencing Using the OpenSpace-Online Methodology—Results-Oriented Participation via Internet. Edited by Mario Gust and Dr. Uwe Seebacher. Ottobrunn, Germany: USP Publishing International, 2004. [In German.]
Mavromichais, Carl, “Cyberspace Chat.” Registered Nurse Journal 15, no. 6 (2003): 25. Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO), Canada.
Pfützenreuter, Rolf. “The Human Being in the Centre—As Well Across Distances: The OpenSpace-Online Methodology.” Gemeinsinn-Werkstatt.de, c/o Akademie Führung & Kompetenz Centrum für angewandte Politikforschung (CAP), München, Germany, 2005.
ORGANIZATION
OpenSpace-Online GmbH—The Power of People!—www.OpenSpace-Online.com