Agile Open Space

On June 5th and June 6st I attended a so-called Agile Open Space conference at the Universiteit of Utrecht. ‘Open Space” is a way to confer with a minimum set of directives and no predetermined topics.
The only rules that do apply come from ‘Open Space Technology’:

• no agenda established in advance
• participants that attend are the right people
• the law of two feet.

The latter meaning: leave the session whenever you want. Quite ‘loose’ for the structured person I am, but I felt I had to experience this at least once.
To accommodate the process, there were whiteboards, paper, stickies, markers and a `rubber duck’. This ‘rubber duck’ was used as a kind of microphone but without the sound amplifier. Who ever held the duck spoke. Who wasn’t did not. Everyone said it was a `chicken `. But really, it was a duck!
A diagram with timeslots for the sessions was taped to the wall. There were four places in the location where the session could be held. The participants wrote/noted their session topic or issue on stickies. The stickies were arranged in the timetable. After arranging the sessions, all participants could indicate which sessions they wanted to attend. On one session many people were present (especially the ones held in the garden because of the beautiful weather!) and at other sessions nobody showed up.
No problem at all, to me it felt like a natural ‘flow’. This is self-organizing and therefore very `agile’. Some of the topics were: the role of the product owner, the benefits of irresponsibility, systems thinking, best books to read, Agile testing and much more. Fierce discussions were held, but people respected each other and debated with a lot of humor.
I haven’t seen anyone that didn’t participate.

A big THANK YOU to Marc and Willem for organizing the event, location, drinks & lunch during the conference, Koen for sponsoring the evening drinks and Erik for sponsoring the absolutely delicious diner. But above all I would like to thank all participants for their active and constructive contribution.

I met some nice people, spoke about and listened to interesting topics and enjoyed myself very much.
This won’t be the last time a will join an Agile Open Space event!