Open Space Technology

Introduction

Open Space Technology (OST) is a strategy for organizing meetings of between 5 and 1000 participants. It has been documented by Harrison Owen -- See References for two of his books on the subject.

OST enables self-organizing groups of all sizes to deal with complex problems in short periods of time.  

OST works in both face-to-face and virtual or electronic modes.  Real-time conferencing technology such as Microsoft's Teams or Slack or Google Docs can be used for a virtual organization open space discussion.

The following elements of OST are described further in Harrison Owen's book, Expanding Our Now.

Four Mechanisms

Four Principles

One Law

Four Conditions for use