Suzanne Daigle has just come out with her book ‘Open Space on the Open Road: A Love Story’ (https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/open-space-on-the-open-road-a-love-story/38130954/all-editions/), causing us to reminisce about our formative years. Tobias Mayer – educator, facilitator, consultant – connected Suzanne and me in ReImagine Science’s (then Yámana Science & Technology) formative months, leading to a rich and rewarding partnership with Suzanne that continues to this day.
Tobias pointed us toward ways of working and ways of thinking that are self-organizing, nurturing, and creative.
His email of March 19th, 2010 was the seed for something that has continued to grow and bear fruit in widely diverse, and welcomed, ways – who could have foretold how much impact this would have?:
I’d like to introduce you to a colleague of mine, Suzanne Daigle. Suzanne is deeply involved in Open Space, and if you are not familiar with that yet, I recommend you take a look. It is a wonderful method of generating exactly the right dialog amongst a group of people. There may be room for collaboration here, especially as Suzanne and I are exploring ways of working with Scrum and Open Space together. Let me know if you’d like me to introduce you.
Tobias
Suzanne and I hit it off immediately, excited to be building upon shared inquiry, ideas, and idealism for the future. ReImagine Science started our hands-on systemic change work (under our original sobriquet Yámana Science & Technology) by adopting Open Space Technology in our Science UnSummits (2010 & 2012) as part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival.
Our work is featured the chapter ‘ReImagining Science into a New Future.’
This book has wonderful resources in the appendix and is highly recommended for anyone considering using Open Space for the first time (or even if you’ve used it many times!). It adds the very personal to the practical and strategic. Handy charts and figures such as the following make it a great resource for anyone doing systemic change work:
*Image reproduced from Appendix, chapter 43, of Suzanne Daigle’s book Open Space on the Open Road: A Love Story
Suzanne opening the space at the Elliott School for International Affairs, George Washington University, Oct 24, 2010
Second day of Open Space: the topic was ‘Shifting the Effort/Reward Ratio in Science’
Suzanne conducted a post-event interview to capture my assessment of the event and how effective it may have been, which I stumbled across when reflecting on that first event for this post – the interview is here.
