 Open space. Open space technology is a meeting format designed for self-organization, inclusivity and emergent agendas. Harrison Owen is the man associated with the origination of it and he states that it's most useful in the environments that contain high levels of complexity, diversity of people and potential solutions, conflict either real or potential and urgency. In an open space meeting the agenda is emergent so it's impossible to know exactly what's going to be addressed during the meeting. It's kind of the point. However the process is designed to ensure that the issues that are most important to the people attending will be included in the agenda and the issues raised will be addressed by the participants best capable of getting something done about them and the most important ideas, recommendations, discussions etc and next steps will be documented. I've personally been involved in open space sessions of over a thousand people and it's been documented in groups of over two thousand people. It's pretty simple and it's comprised of just four principles and one law. The principles are number one whoever comes are the right people. Basically the people who care will turn up. Number two whenever it starts is the right time. As Owen says spirit and creativity do not run on the clock. Number three whatever happens is the only thing that could have and be prepared to be surprised. Number four when it's over it's over within this session. The idea there is do the work not and the one law of open space is called the law of two feet. The idea there is that if at any time during our time together you find yourself in any situation where you're neither learning nor contributing use your two feet and go somewhere else. At the beginning of an open space meeting the participants sit in a circle and a facilitator usually states the overall theme or purpose and then we invite participants to propose topics for discussion anything that interests them. When they do that they then find a place in the marketplace for that topic. If someone posts a topic they're expected to have the passion to be responsible enough to start the discussion on it. That person's also expected to make sure that a report of the discussion is done and posted usually on a wall so that any participant can access the content of the discussion even if they don't go to that particular session. Once a number of topics have been posted all the marketplace has been filled participants are invited to sign up to topics they're interested in. Those that go ahead go ahead those that don't have enough interest simply don't. Large scale participatory meeting formats like open space technology model the values and principles of the agile manifesto they encourage emergence collaboration and communication therefore organizations that are looking to scale an agile culture should find great value in meetings like this and world can fit.