The concept of Open Space has been around for more than 3 decades now and has been quite popular in the Agile community. In this session, we will see how we can bring Open Space to our Community group meetings. We will give a brief overview of how Open Space works, and then demo it with the participants in our virtual session. The same concept can be applied if you have an in-person meetups as well - just that you would use flipchart boards instead of breakout rooms.

Click here to get a very high level overview of what Open Space is.

You can use Open Space within your own organizations as well. Topics for Open Space emerge during the session. The participants come up with various topics and then they vote on the top ones they would like to discuss (if there are more topics than rooms / boards).

The beauty of Open Space is that you don't have to have pre-determined agendas, or find speakers. The participants themselves will all be involved - and everyone can contribute in whichever way they can and that too in the topics of their interest. There's no right or wrong and no one will be judged - it's just like a water cooler / coffee break conversation that you have with your team members or friends. Everyone has the right to share their opinions and be heard about the topic. Participants would also be free to move across from one topic to another as well all within the same session.