Crafting Code Podcast

[00:00:16] Allan Stewart: Welcome to the Crafting Code Podcast, where we discuss the importance of doing the right thing at the right time with the right tools. I'm Allan Stewart, a software architect, and lately I've been thinking about the importance of good engineering leadership.

[00:00:30] Dave Adsit: I'm Dave Adsit, a VP of Engineering, and recently I've been thinking about project versus product, making better bets, and the trade-offs that come with roadmaps.

[00:00:40] Allan Stewart: Our topic for this episode is open space technology, and we're joined by three special guests to help us talk about this topic.

[00:00:48] Mike Clement: I'm Mike Clement. I'm a distinguished software engineer, and I've been thinking about cargo culting.

[00:00:54] Will Munn: I'm Will Munn. I'm a senior engineering manager, and I've been thinking about empowered product and engineering teams and trios.

[00:01:02] Amy Dredge: And I'm Amy Dredge. I'm a VP of engineering. And lately, I've been thinking about the role a product strategy plays in shaping technical architecture.

[00:01:10] Allan Stewart: So open space technology, what exactly is this and how did it come about?

[00:01:18] Mike Clement: So open space technology was created, founded, discovered. I don't know quite what the right term there is, but by a man named Harrison Owen. He organized a traditional conference where he recruited speakers and rented a venue and had catering, and all of those things that you would expect from a traditional in-person conference. And it went really well, except for the fact that as he was talking to one of the participants, sorry, talking to one of the participants at the end, he asked them what they thought of it, and they said, "it was great. The thing they really liked the best though was the coffee breaks." So he realized, wait a second, if the best part of the event was the hallway, was the breaks, then why why don't we figure out a way to come up with a structure that allows us to have that experience, but in, in the big, the idea being that, like, right. If we have an event that, that is just a break, right. We've all been to, well, I don't know, but many of us have been to events where it's like a mixer or just a cocktail party or a networking event. And those are very loosely structured where it's just like, "go find somebody to talk to." And while that can be useful in certain ways, there's a lot of serendipity there. What OpenSpace does is put some loose structure around that idea of having a bunch of people who are interested in a similar topic in the same room together, but says, "hey, how about people propose topics? How about we have different spaces set up? How about we have different time blocks set up?" And those participants are able to come and populate that agenda. And so people who have energy around different topics, who have interest in different topics, are able to come together and have those conversations that are like a hallway conversation, like a conversation during a break of a conference, but a little more focused and productive.

[00:03:32] Allan Stewart: I think about that in terms of the name open space technology or the term. I have to admit, I was thrown when I first heard about that because I'd heard about open spaces or open space conferences. But when I first started hearing open space technology, I was like, "oh, well, is this like a thing that you download?" It's just like, there's a software, like a special chip in your badge that you have to have to make it an open space technology. But then I was thinking, I looked up to refresh myself on the definition of technology. And yeah, there is a definition. I was looking at American Heritage Dictionary. There is a definition that says that it's electronic or digital products and systems. But that was actually definition three. And the first definition is really the application of science, especially to to industrial or commercial objectives. And I think about that, what you were just saying, Mike, it's like, hey, let's apply some structure. Let's think about, and I don't know the history well enough to say, you know, how much scientific rigor was applied to this, but it has been refined, right? Like refined over time to see what works really well to create this open space experience.

[00:04:48] Mike Clement: experience. Yeah, it does. I mean, I'll agree that, like, it threw me off a little bit the first time too. And I was like, "okay, like, I think the technology word kind of gives it a little gravitas, gives a little bit of like, hey, this is like an actual system of different processes that are kind of interconnected." And I've seen that some people do take, like, "oh, open space is just a bunch of people like talking." And while that can be productive, when you lose some of that structure, it can become harder to manage and less productive. Where I've seen this a lot is where there are potentially events like a traditional conference, and then they kind of have an open space attached to it. This can sometimes work, but a lot of times that open space then becomes kind of an afterthought and is not very well structured, is not very well promoted. Like if you don't have a kind of a critical mass of people that come and contribute ideas, it's in a traditional conference, you're not always in that mindset that I'm contributing as opposed to I'm just going to go sit in a room and listen to a speaker.

[00:06:09] Dave Adsit: Right. Right. So if thinking about open space as a technology throws you guys off, I think it's probably because you haven't played enough Civilization. But moving on, let's talk about what is open space technology. What is an open space? So when we talk about it, there are four principles that are critical to the success of an open space. Right. The four principles are whoever comes is the right people. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. And whenever it's over, it's over. So let's take those one at a time. Let's start with whoever comes is the right people.

[00:06:52] Mike Clement: So I have a story that goes with that. One time I was at an open space event and I had a topic. In this case, it was Wardley Mapping that I had learned a little bit about, but hadn't necessarily dug in as much as I would have liked to. And so one of the things that can happen in open space is you can actually propose a topic that you don't know a lot about and potentially attract people. Or alternatively, what I actually kind of hoped for was when I pitched the idea of the group, I said, "I'm going to be using the session time for Wardley Mapping. Tapping. If nobody else shows up, that's great, because then I will get some dedicated time to actually do some reading, do some investigation, learn more about the topic myself." And so that is a modality that works in open space, you know, that I was almost mad when people showed up to my topic. And, but on the flip side, what it did was it, it allowed me to explain what I did know, know, because nobody else, like everybody else was like at a zero, and I was maybe at a one. I was, I explained what I did know. And I realized through doing that, that I understood some of the concepts better than I thought, and some of the concepts I still needed to learn better. But it also got to the point where I was like, "oh, I do have enough knowledge here that I could to probably present something at a traditional conference around this." So that's one story I have around that principle.

[00:08:26] Amy Dredge: Yeah, I have some thoughts about this principle here. I think that in a standard conference format, you can easily end up in a session that's, you know, 30 or even 60 minutes long. And sometimes you'll realize five minutes into it that it's not what you expected. And in that setting, leaving a session is, you know, a little stigmatized. It can be distracting to presenters. It can seem disrespectful. And so, you know, a lot of times we'll stay, and staying in a session that you don't want to be in usually means that you pull out your laptop, you do something else. And that can, you know, you can lose momentum. It can diminish any momentum that you've built up from previous sessions and an engagement that you're feeling in that conference. And so what I love about open space with this principle is that it encourages you to leave in those situations, and that increases the value that you get out of your time. And so by embracing that principle that whoever comes is the right people can really increase the value that I get out of the time spent.

[00:09:37] Will Munn: The concept of whoever coming to be the right people means that maybe you're the expert and maybe you are the learner, right? You could be either of those things. And so being there, you have those opportunities that will arise depending on who is there to have different types of conversations where you take on a different role.

[00:10:01] Mike Clement: I think additionally there is that regardless of the level of knowledge, the level of experience somebody has with the topic, the people who do come, they are excited about that topic. They chose that topic over whatever else is going on. And so even if they don't know a lot, they're going to bring that enthusiasm to that topic. You know, that couple people that came to my Wardley Mapping talk, they were really interested. Like, even though I'm like, "this might be kind of boring for you guys, because I don't really know what I'm talking about and haven't figured out how to explain it well." And but they were, they were there and soaking it up. Which is, which is, you know, not to try not trying to toot my own horn here, but like it went really well. And because again, more because they brought their enthusiasm than anything that I did.

[00:10:50] Dave Adsit: So related to whoever comes as the right people is whatever happens is the only thing that could have.

[00:10:56] Allan Stewart: One thought that I've had about this principle is that when you do combine it with the previous principle, there's kind of a sense of freedom there that your session doesn't have to be a particular way. You don't have to build up an expectation of it should be this way, or I need to be able to present in a particular way. Or even if it kind of gets out of control, the conversation strays into some other lane that you didn't expect, it's okay. And you don't have to worry about it. If you're facilitating a discussion, the burden is not on you to say, "you have to make this session the most incredible thing that all these people have seen all day." And they're going to, it's the only thing they're going to even remember from the conference, right? Like that, that, that level of expectation just goes completely away.

[00:11:51] Amy Dredge: Yeah. Piggybacking on, on that sense of freedom. I think that it also gives you a safe environment to try facilitating a discussion, right? You can propose a session and you can, you can convene it, but like you're saying, Allan, you don't have to be like, like you're on the hook or pressured to make it everything that any everybody there wants it to be. It really is more flexible than that, and so, um, I think it provides that safe environment to try to try facilitating, especially if it's something that you, um, have not done before and feel a little uncomfortable about.

[00:12:29] Will Munn: Yeah, the format of any given session is really fluid, I think. And that's one of the things that's neat about it. It can become whatever you want it to be, right? Just a conversation that goes round robin to whoever wants to speak or popcorn or something like that. Or it could be a little more structured, and maybe people spend a little time doing some lean coffee set up to their discussion beforehand or, you know, a full on presentation.

[00:13:00] Mike Clement: I've had sessions that have been like fishbowl discussions. So you have kind of a core group that's discussing and you kind of have other people that are watching, and but those people can sub in as you go through it. I've been in sessions where somebody's brought a game that they want to play. Either they're playtesting their own game, or they have a game that they use in their consulting practice and want to share with other people, or they're workshopping something new, right? There's all sorts of different things. I think one of the things that I like about this principle, I always think about this as kind of the Zen principle. It's like you sort of have to accept whatever happens, right? Because it's the only thing that could have happened. And what this kind of sometimes looks like, and it's one of the things that as I facilitate an open space that I encourage people to do is, like Amy said, like leaving a session is fine. Also, breaking up a session is fine. This was actually something that I saw a couple, happened a couple of times in the, the Software Crafters on Conference that happened this last week, where some people that spontaneously, there was a big group in, in one particular session. And they're like, "hey, there's enough interest. We're going to have, we're going to go to this other space and have a smaller group discussion around this kind of subset of this topic." And kind of that organic splitting of topics was actually something that I hadn't seen happen a lot before, but was really powerful, I think, in terms of how the day progressed.

[00:14:39] Amy Dredge: I'm just listening to us talk here about this principle and about the importance of just accepting what happens as the only thing that that could have. And I want to just, like, speak to those of us that are more of a type A personality, those of us that like a little more structure and like to know more of what to expect, because I'm, I'm, uh, certainly that way. And I know hearing, like, something that's so open-ended and flexible can actually be a little bit, um, I don't know, not terrifying, but maybe a little intimidating. And, and I just want to say, like, I, I think that, um, you kind kind of have to try it to see, to really, like, feel the value of it and to experience it. Because I have had multiple experiences where there's a session that I've joined or one that I've convened that ends up being something quite different than what I expected at the outset. And those are often the sessions that I have those big aha moments in or those big takeaways. So it is true that whatever happens is the only thing that could have. And if it's hard to embrace, just try it because it really is pretty powerful.

[00:15:46] Dave Adsit: Right. The next principle is whenever it starts is the right time.

[00:15:51] Mike Clement: So in open space, we talked about, you know, I talked about how there's an agenda, right? There's time slots that are there. But what I found is that oftentimes, you know, the conversation maybe even started before the open space event started, right? And it's just sort of continuing in the open space. On the other side, even though you have kind of these blocks of time, things don't always start when you expect them to, which is kind of what I think about in terms of this principle. So, because, um, like one of the things that again Amy emphasized was, like, people will often move around during an open space. Sometimes that means that the people that are most interested in your topic or will may not find it at the at the beginning of the time box. So I had this one experience where I was at a really big open space. It was the biggest one I've ever been involved with, I think it was like, it was like 800 people. Um, and it was across multiple rooms and this big convention center. And it was really cool. Um, but even I, so like somebody convened a session and I was like, "oh, well, like there's like about three sessions that I'm interested in." And so I went to one and I was like, "no, this isn't quite right." Went to another one. "That's not quite right." And I went to the third one, and there was the convener sitting there by themselves ourselves about 10 minutes into the recession. And I rolled up and said, "hey, I'm interested in, in talking about this topic." And they're like, "well, I was about to pack it in." And I'm like, "well, let's, let's talk about it. And, you know, if it turns out we don't have anything to say, that's fine." And so that idea that, like, it necessarily is going to start at the time that is scheduled, um, isn't always true because in that case, like, even then we had two or three people join us even later in the session. And it ended up being a really good session. So whenever it starts at the right time.

[00:17:54] Will Munn: I could say that was your Goldilocks topic, Mike. It was just right.

[00:17:59] Allan Stewart: I was just thinking that.

[00:18:02] Will Munn: I've had some experience with people arriving late as well. And I think it may be not quite quite the same example that you used, Mike, but actually instead another session actually ends early and then people started filtering in to a conversation where maybe there weren't a whole lot of people before. And the conversation changes and morphs and kind of grows. And now we're going back to, this is the only thing that could have happened, but, but the concept of, of, you know, that starting, that part of that conversation, starting when those additional people arrive, I think is a real, it's very, very indicative of how open space works, I think.

[00:18:47] Allan Stewart: So if you are trying to find that right place or you just decide that it's time to switch, you don't have to feel bad. You don't have to feel like, "oh, they already started. They've already been going for 30 minutes. And so I'm just not even going to bother. I'm just going to wait outside until the next session starts." No, you can jump in. At the very least, you hear what they're talking about.

[00:19:08] Dave Adsit: One of the things related to whenever it starts is the right time is that whenever the topic comes into existence is also the right time. Like sometimes topics aren't even on the board until somebody says, "oh, I need to talk about this. I am thinking about this." And they put the topic on the board and then they go start this discussion right now. And maybe people join them and maybe they don't.

[00:19:28] Mike Clement: Yeah, one of the cool things about open space is that the agenda can morph over the course of the day. Like I said, sometimes sessions split. And as we maybe move to the next principle, right, whenever it's over, it's over. Sometimes sessions need to expand beyond their time box, right? Right. So we'll we'll mention that occasionally there's this, you know, when it's over, it's over might mean that it ends early. But it also might mean that the topic needs more space and might need to expand into multiple sessions, which is a really cool thing to see happen again, because there's a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm around that particular topic. And it may not even be the same people that continue with it completely. Maybe you have a core group, but then you have other people potentially come in during that second time session because they maybe wanted to go, but it was like their second choice. And so now that they have that opportunity, they can go have a conversation around that topic.

[00:20:32] Dave Adsit: One of the things I think is cool about that is how much easier that's become when we do virtual open spaces versus in a physical space. Often in the physical space. You're like, okay, well, this conversation isn't quite over, but somebody else is coming in the room and it's time for their conversation to start. And so we're going to take this one on a roadshow down the hall and you may or may not lose momentum. But in virtual spaces, you just create another breakout, create another Zoom, just move to another space in the virtual space and you can keep going as though nothing has happened.

[00:21:09] Mike Clement: Yeah, for the online open spaces that I've facilitated and helped organize, right, because it's virtual, you can just keep extending the space. And then we try to make sure that there's enough spaces. Whereas again, when you're doing an in-person open space, you have to have a budget around how much square footage and how many rooms and all of that and kind of have to predict it.

[00:21:32] Dave Adsit: Chairs, whiteboards and easels.

[00:21:33] Mike Clement: Yeah. But that being said, even in an in-person space, sessions can often take the form of like a walk, like, hey, we're just going to go outside or there's a little place in the foyer of the building that we can use or whatever, right? Like there's maybe a break room or a place where the food is. Like you can always find a space. How happy the particular building is about you using that space for that purpose, that's maybe a different question.

[00:22:06] Dave Adsit: Whatever happens is the only thing that possibly could have. Indeed.

[00:22:09] Mike Clement: Just like a negative experience there. I was in one open space event where there was, I don't even really know, but it was like the organization that was hosting the space didn't want anybody to move any of the furniture. Like they had, I don't know if it was a union thing or what, but like nobody was supposed to move anything. And it was a bunch of Agilists who are used to customizing their space wherever they go. And it did not work very well. A lot of friction there. But that's the only thing that could have happened. So it was just interesting.

[00:22:47] Dave Adsit: Take a bunch of very rigid people and put a bunch of agilists in the mix, you're gonna have friction. It's inevitable. So related to the four principles, we also have one law, the law of personal mobility, personal responsibility. Let's talk about that.

[00:23:03] Allan Stewart: So this law, I first heard about it under a different name, the law of two feet. But it says that if during our time together, you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, move to some more productive place. This law, I think, is really important, given what we've already talked about, that people can come and go from sessions. But to me, it also makes me think about how if you're going to spend your time doing something like a conference, it's important. Even if it's not an open space conference, a standard conference, you really should be thinking about what are you going to get out of this? And it's not just sitting down and waiting for just the right thing that you needed to hear to just come to you, but rather making sure that you are getting the most out of what you wanted to see in the conference. And this law of personal mobility or personal responsibility is really grounded in that concept. It's like, hey, take control, go and make this a good experience for yourself.

[00:24:14] Dave Adsit: This is one that really resonates with me for a few reasons. One of them is that you have responsibility to find a topic that you can be engaged in and learn on or contribute on or whatever. And sometimes that means you need to propose another topic for that session, that time block, because there isn't one that you feel like you are really interested in. When I attend open spaces, I tend to move around a lot. I will contribute to a topic, but if it's not what I wanted and I'm not interested in it, I will just move to the next topic. And I've been known to hit three or four in whatever the time block is, looking for one that I feel like I'm really going to contribute in. And that's fine. That is actually an expected and acceptable behavior in the context of open space. If you got up and walked out of your company all hands because the CEO is boring, or you walk out of your boss's staff meeting, you might not have a good time later down the road. But at OpenSpace, that's not just acceptable, but it's expected. And each of us needs to take responsibility. I also heard it first as the law of two feet. I like it better as the law of personal responsibility. It puts a lot more onus on each contributor, each participant to do the right thing at the right time.

[00:25:43] Amy Dredge: Yeah, this one, this law resonates with me as well, Dave, and especially resonates because it's so applicable to our day to day. You're totally right that if you, you know, just decide you're in a boring meeting or a meeting that doesn't feel like you're getting a lot of value out of it, you decide to just get up and leave. That's generally frowned upon and may even get you in trouble. But I think it does encourage you to think about how you're spending your time and that personal responsibility that you have to make sure that you're spending your time in a way that is valuable, right? You're learning, you're contributing something, something that is a valuable use of that time. And so, you know, once you've attended an open space event, you may find yourself in your day-to-day work work thinking about this law, and it's something that I've seen introduced to teams. And once it's introduced and agreed upon, it can be really powerful because, you know, you may agree that it doesn't mean just get up and leave, but it does open a door to be able to say, you know, "hey, I don't I don't think that this is going where we need it to go, right?" And it can really just open up the conversation about how to make sure that we are all personally responsible for for what we're doing and how we're spending our time.

[00:27:04] Mike Clement: Yeah, like Allan said, contrasting it with a traditional conference, like you are delegating some of your personal responsibility to the conference by saying, "hey, I'm going to go to the Java track or the Erlang track or the front end framework track or whatever, right?" Because you're saying, "okay, you conference organizer know what I need to know about this particular topic more than I do," which may or may not be true and is probably not true for every single session. But again, the beauty of open space is that you have that responsibility to bring forward the topics that actually are relevant to you, not just in the abstract, but relevant right now in terms of what you're experiencing in the day to day.

[00:27:50] Dave Adsit: So in addition to our four principles and one law, there is one admonition of open space technology, and that is that we need to be prepared to be surprised.

[00:28:02] Will Munn: authorized. It's an interesting concept. And I think based on what we've talked about here today, it probably makes some sense, but also maybe not. Because if you think about it, you go to a conference and you sort of expect, "hey, this is what I'm hoping to get out of this." And I think when you go to an open space conference, you may have, or when you go to any open space, like I run these at my day job like every quarter, or originally I was doing all of them, and now we have other people who've helped facilitate them as well. But what comes out of those is never what we expected, and I think that's the real trick. It's actually just not what you expect to get out of it is what's going to happen, and it's somewhat the same principle I think you see see behind lean coffee sort of interaction, right? Where people get together and they maybe group things together and they vote on stuff, and you may end up discussing something that you had no idea you were going to be discussing, right? And the same thing happens with open space, but maybe even to a further degree. We've had all sorts of things come up as topics, things that are very work related and solve issues that we in some cases maybe only one or two people even knew was an issue. But then you get the right group of people together, and maybe that thing was much easier to solve than anybody ever thought. Or maybe somebody proposes a topic that has nothing or very little to do with the general overarching principle, but a lot of people show up to it anyway because they were all really interested in that topic. And maybe you end up talking about something that's just kind of, you know, really would have been a hallway conversation at any other convention about something that everyone is interested in. And maybe you'll learn about something that you had no idea was going to be a part of this event.

[00:30:05] Mike Clement: I know Dave talks about how, I think it's Marty Cagan talks about how the best product teams games have 50% of their experiments succeed or the things that they try actually work. And that kind of idea is kind of what I think about here, where it's one of the things in the open space community, they say is like, "if it happens the way that you expect, life would be dull and there no learning would occur," right? When things don't go the way you expect, that is when the learning actually happens. And so embracing that as part of open space is really powerful. Like I think Amy said, like sometimes she's proposed sessions and they've gone in ways that she did not expect, either based off of the questions other people ask, the contributions people made, whatever, right? It just, it doesn't go the way you expect. And that's when, those are probably the most memorable sessions

[00:31:05] Amy Dredge: that that I've been to as well. Yeah, there's two, there's two, like, surprises that are really prominent in my mind. I am always surprised, um, with open space events, but, um, there there was, uh, I had a few experiences where I was surprised by the vulnerability expressed in the group, um, and I think that can be, you know, it is often surprising, especially when you're in a, you know, a somewhat professional setting with, um, you know, your, your, it's about your, your professional job job. And that's, that's been powerful for me. And then also, you know, another pleasant surprise I found is when I proposed a topic, and I think, "no one's gonna want to talk to me about this, right? Because I just think, what is there to say, right?" Or no one wants to come wait in my problems with me. And, and I've been pleasantly surprised in those situations as well.

[00:32:00] Mike Clement: Well, it's better to wait in your problems to stay waiting in my problems.

[00:32:09] Dave Adsit: I've run several open spaces internally in my company. And one of the things that surprised, we ran them for engineering. And of course we drug product along whether they wanted to come or not, because there wasn't, there weren't any engineers for them to meet with if they weren't going to participate in open space. And one of the first surprises that I had is that people from other departments wanted to participate as well. They saw what we were doing. They saw the board and the topics showing up and they're like, "can we participate in that conversation? Can we add a topic?" And so we had marketing and support join our open space. And that was the first surprise. And then marketing and support, both members of each of those teams expressed surprise that engineers actually care about the things that they care about. We had engineers who actually care about delivering high quality software and meeting the needs of our customers in a way that is easy for the customers and easy for the support team. And I had people from marketing express that they were surprised that engineers actually cared about how do we, how do we turn this software into something sellable? And I guess this just means that we've done a poor job in marketing ourselves in engineering, but these were surprises all around. And in my organization, we've started doing a fairly regular open space in order to keep some of those conversations going. So we've talked about what is open space technology from the perspective of the principles and the practices, well, the principles and the law and the admonition. We haven't really gotten into any of the logistics of it. And Amy mentioned that there are some type A people who really want to know what to expect on the day of. Should we talk a little bit about some of the mechanics of how an open space tends to go?

[00:34:00] Mike Clement: So the day, like I said, is loosely structured. It doesn't mean there's no structure, but it does mean there is some structure. The day opens with an opening circle where the participants gather. If you're in person, ideally it's in a circle. Depending upon the space that you have. In an online space, in the event that Will, Amy, and I run, the Engineering Leadership Summit, we have a virtual space. We use Gather, and we get into a virtual circle. The idea being that we're supposed to be looking at each other and thinking about the other people that are in the room because they're where the topics are going to come from. They are the ones that are going to participate with you throughout the day. Um, and then after explaining some of the stuff that we explained today around the four principles, the one law and the, uh, one admonition, um, that's when you start to build the marketplace that you get your ideas out there. They're logistically wise. Usually you have some sort of line. People do a quick pitch about their session. Then they take their sticky, either physical or virtual, and put it onto the agenda and be able to say, "hey, I'm going to be meeting in the green space or in room 205 or whatever the logistics are of like the different spaces are." And then whatever time, like at 10 a.m. And you fill up the space. And ideally, if you have a facilitator that's open to whatever happens is the only thing they could have. If the space fills up, you try to figure out how you're gonna open up more spaces for people. After everybody's pitched, then you launch into it. Basically at that point, it feels similar-ish to a traditional conference in terms of you have an agenda, you have spaces that you're gonna go to. Except for once you get there, it's not the sage on the stage that's going to present something to you. Not necessarily. I think we've talked a lot about discussion type sessions, but it can be that a session comes in the form of, "hey, I have this presentation that I give or I have this presentation that I'm workshopping and I want to give it and kind of share what I know." But usually it's more of a discussion. And even if somebody is trying to present something, a lot of times people will interject and make sure that they're participating as well. And then at the end of the day, after you've had the sessions, again, those can be a varying length depending upon the facilitator. You have breaks in there. And then at the end of the day, you have a closing circle. In the closing circle, you try to give everybody an opportunity to be able to share what they learned throughout the day, a takeaway, an aha, something that, again, surprised them from their experience at the open space. And that can also be a really powerful way to, like, reflect on the day and to hear what other people learned and got out of the day. And can lead to, again, additional conversations afterward. Like if Will were to say, "hey, I went to this session and it really resonated with me because XYZ." I mean, be like, "oh, I didn't go to that one. And now I know that Will might be somebody I could reach out to, to better understand." Some open spaces last multiple days and what they'll often do at the end of the day, they'll have evening news where it's kind of like, here's announcements and then they launch into a, You do another marketplace opening the next day for each day. And so there's kind of different ways you can structure it, but that's kind of the high level structure of how an open space day goes. I don't know if there's anything that I missed.

[00:37:51] Dave Adsit: I think that that covers my experiences. I will say the very first open space I ever went to, we got together for 45 minutes the night before to create the agenda so that we could all be ready to go first thing in the morning the next day. This was early on, and we hadn't embraced all the principles quite as well as we have later.

[00:38:13] Mike Clement: That does remind me. There was an OpenSpace event that I went to where there was kind of a pre-planning session by a subset of the attendees. These attendees were more developer types, and it was an event that was more generally agile. And so they wanted to make sure that they focused, they wanted to make sure that the topics that came out were strong topics that were going to get a lot of traction. So it was kind of like almost a pre-harvesting of topics. I kind of had a reaction where I'm like, "this seems like counter to the intent of open space." But I saw that it was actually kind of powerful in terms of like this minority group in this majority group to make sure that they got a good representation in the marketplace. So it wasn't the whole marketplace that was filled up. It was just like, "hey, if we had a track that was like our track, how would that kind of work out so that it's not too fragmented?"

[00:39:15] Dave Adsit: Well, I think one of the things that's interesting there or important there is that an open space should have a theme. Sometimes the theme is here's a problem we're working on. Sometimes the theme is we all work at this company. Let's talk about that. Sometimes the theme is, you know, we've had we've had software craftsmanship as a theme. We've had engineering leadership as a theme. You can have the theme be anything. And it sounds like in this case, the overall theme had some sub themes that were being expressed, right? And so I think I would probably be a little bit skeptical of that as well. But I think in the overall scheme of things, that can be, it can be powerful to express the theme or the topic that you're trying to address. It's not just a free for all. It's not any topic can come. I mean, honestly, if any topic does come, that's probably fine. But most of the people who show up are going to be there to talk about the overall topic of the day.

[00:40:12] Mike Clement: Yeah. And I think part of it that was kind of cool after reflecting on it was that it was self organized. It was not top down by the facilitator, whereas, "hey, you subgroup, go figure this out and come back with your list of topics." It was more like, "let's just kind of think about it ahead of time so that like on the the day, we've primed the pump a little bit." And we've kind of like thought, hey, here, like, there are specific people who are going to sponsor topics that are interesting to this subset of the

[00:40:46] Allan Stewart: population. To me, this exemplifies how an open space differs from other kinds of conferences. So, and we've been dancing around this a little bit already. But with all conferences, is what you get out of it is related to what you put into it, right? So even if you're just going to go to a standard conference where the presentations were all picked in advance, well, you probably looked at the schedule. You probably looked at the theme or knew something about the organizers that helped you decide whether you wanted to go to the conference in the first place. If you're going to spend your time and money, you want to have it be useful. Open space kind of takes that, uh, makes that especially true because even if you're not going to propose a topic, even if you're not going to facilitate a session, at the minimum, like any other conference, you've got to pick where are you going to go, what, how are you going to spend the time while you're there. But then if you go to that next level and contribute a little bit more, take part in the conversations and not just sit there listening, but now you're talking, now you're maybe even pitching a session. It might take more effort, but it's also empowering. It gives you that ability to say, "hey, I want to make this conference what I want to get out of it instead of just hoping that something else will happen." And so the question I have for all of you or what are some of the things that have stood out to you in open space conferences, open space, or conferences that are part open space? How has that made it a different experience?

[00:42:33] Amy Dredge: Yeah, Allan, I want to emphasize a bit of what you're saying, because I think you're right that it's, you know, you do have that personal responsibility, but it does also give you more freedom. And I want to just talk about that a little bit, because for me, for some reason, I've never quite felt like I fit right in, in the tech community. And so when I go to in-person conferences, I a lot of times feel imposter syndrome. And more than that, I just kind of feel a little uncomfortable because I don't, you know, I feel like the Venn diagram of my My personal interests with a lot of other people in the community isn't as great as the overlap for a lot of others. And so, you know, oftentimes those lunchtime conversations or those hallway conversations in between sessions, I've just kind of always struggled to to like, you know, invite myself into those conversations. And I can see the power of of the community building that happens there. Right, the the friendships that are created, the network that is created. And so, um, I I love that open space technology changes that for me. Um, you know, I can go find the people that are interested in topics that I'm interested in, and I can share my genuine thoughts and perspective, even if it's different from what other people are expressing, and it's encouraged because I'm there, so I'm one one of the right people to be there. And what I share is what is happening. And it's the only thing that could have happened. And so there's an explicit acceptance that really is empowering for me. And so, yes, you're right. You get out of it, what you put into it. There is a responsibility. We've talked about that. But for me, it does remove a barrier to creating that sense and feeling that sense of community.

[00:44:29] Mike Clement: That made me think of is that open space is the one in-person event type that I had been to previously that translated mostly well to an online space. A traditional conference, when you go online, is basically a bunch of video streams. It's a bunch of video presentations, which can be valuable, but sometimes I'm sitting there thinking, even in an in-person event, like, I could probably find a YouTube video that's better than this presenter on this particular topic. There's a different vibe to being in person and you get to talk to other people about it immediately after and you have a shared experience and that has a lot of value. But you don't have that same interaction necessarily when you're when you're doing those types of events online. Whereas with open space, because it is highly interactive, it is focused on topics that people want to talk about right now, that it has worked really well. Well, I've seen it used. I've seen a lot of different technologies be used to try to simulate an open space experience online. Oftentimes you can use things like Zoom and have breakout rooms. You can, if you're in an organization that use Microsoft Teams, you could probably use Microsoft Teams in some way to do it. There's a lot of different ways to do it. But the way that Will, Amy, and I are doing it for the Engineering Leadership Summit is we're using a tool called Gather, which basically each particular person has a little avatar that's like a little 16-bit version. You can make it whatever you want, but you have this little avatar that you can move around in the space. And that particular technology enables open space technology to really shine, because you can have you can see the movement of people, you can see where other people are in the space, you can interact, we can walk up to people and have a conversation in the hallway, even if it's, you know, again in theory the, the type of event that it's all the hallway, it's like there's still a hallway way. And again, that allows the conversations and the interactions to be more natural than even in like a Zoom call, right? If I'm in a Zoom call, I can have a conversation with one other person and everybody else can watch. But in a Gather space, I can break off and have my own little conversation with whoever I need to pretty easily without having a facilitator say, they, you know, put me in a breakout room.

[00:47:14] Allan Stewart: In some ways, I feel like it's even easier to be able to get a word in edgewise because there are tools there, right? So there's different tools to help you, you know, whether it's, you know, you raise your hand or somebody sees you on video, like, "okay, it looks like you want us to say something." When you're in person, sometimes it can be so intimidating that like all the people physically there around you and there's so much going on. It's like, "oh, how do I get my voice heard if I wanted to say something?" And if you've got a digital space, there's more opportunities. Or I've even seen people put into a chat window. It's like, "oh, I don't want to say this, but I'm going to chat it." And then somebody else who is more possibly domineering in the conversation can pick up on that and say, "oh, I just noticed that so-and-so said this. Let's talk about it."

[00:48:06] Will Munn: I think there's another thing to keep in mind, too, that separates open space from other types of conferences. And I think it's the type of learning, right, that you're able to do and who it appeals to or who it works for, right? Right. There are absolutely people in this world and, you know, I may be one of them who struggle in a classroom type of setting. Right. And sitting, listening to someone lecture about something and then taking away from that and and doing something with it. Right. And that's certainly what a more traditional conference structure is like. Now, I've been to a lot of traditional conferences and I have taken away a lot of things from them. But that doesn't mean that it's as effective. What I find is that OpenSpace is much more effective because I am part of the conversation rather than listening to someone else talk about it. Now, I can learn really well from reading, but just listening to someone lecture about something doesn't always work for me. And so that's why I think for different learning types, OpenSpace can also be very effective.

[00:49:22] Allan Stewart: So it sounds like open spaces have a lot of advantages. There's a lot of thought that's gone into this. Are there any dark sides, any gotchas that you should watch out for in an open space? Or it can't possibly be all upside, right? Or maybe it can. Maybe it can.

[00:49:44] Amy Dredge: Yeah. I actually, I do have a thought there. I think that we've talked a bit about that personal responsibility. We've talked about the fluidity of an open space event. And I think the potential downside there is that if somebody struggles at first to kind of find the right place to be, they could easily give up, right? I think that's the downside, is like, because it is, it is, um, there's some flexibility there. I think, you know, you might go to a session, your first session, it might be like, "well, then that, that's not, I'm not feeling it." And so you leave, and you go to another one, you're like, "oh, I'm still not feeling it." And I think at that point it would be easy to be like, "I don't know if this is the right kind of event for me," or like, "maybe these aren't my people here." And so So I think that's maybe the downside is that there's not, you know, if you're going to an event where there's like a keynote, often they have a keynote first, right? It's like we're going to have someone that we know is like going to be able to pull in most of the audience. And so I just, I think that maybe that's the downside is that if it takes a little bit of time to be able to find where, where you should be and where the right thing is happening for you, it may be easy to, you know, get just to decide to write it off, to either leave, or if it's an online event, to just, you know, to leave, the, to close your tab and just go about your, your work for the day. And so I think maybe that's the only downside I can think about.

[00:51:22] Allan Stewart: Absolutely. After learning about mob programming and introducing it to some people, I've gotten a similar feedback from them at times where it's like, "oh, I just feel exhausted," right? Because there's kind of a, there's a little bit more energy. There's a social aspect to collaborative coding like that, that I think also exists in an open space where, yeah, you're going to have to put the energy in, right? Sometimes it is easier to just say, "you know what, I'm just going to go to a standard conference where they're going to speak at me and then I'll feel good about myself for having been spoken to." But the downside, the flip side is that you can't make it what you want it to be. And so I know for myself, there have been a couple of times where with open space, I'm like, "oh, man, I don't, I don't even know." Like there's several good things that I want to do during this. And I'm not sure where I'm going to be. And it can be a little bit intimidating.

[00:52:18] Mike Clement: Yeah, I think, I mean, all the downsides I can think of in terms of like online, like apply to any event you're doing online, right, where, like Amy said, you can, you just click it, you just close the tab and you're out, right. Right. And whereas like an in-person open space, you might see somebody drifting to the side and the facilitator might be able to help them out and kind of like help kind of guide them maybe through the rest of the, you know, what they're experiencing and how to maybe help it be a more productive experience. But you don't have that as much when you're in an online space. I think the other thing that Amy highlighted is, well, whoever comes is the right people. Like sometimes like you just don't quite jive with those people and like that you kind of have to figure figure that out. And it could be that it's a subset of the people. I have somebody I work with now that went to an open space event a couple of years ago and like had a really bad experience. Mostly because, like, he felt that all the sessions he went to were, like, he was getting sold thing almost, um, and it was, I think it was very consultant heavy in terms of who showed up to the event, and unfortunately, right, that is kind of conflating the content with the, the, the structure, right, the it wasn't the open space maybe kind of let him down in terms of, like, the, the topics didn't organize themselves in a way that was conducive to his experience being positive. But I also, like, followed up with him afterwards. I'm like, "well, did you exercise the law of personal responsibility and go somewhere else?" He's like, "no, I kind of felt bad." And he kind of wanted to see what happened. And, you know, and I'm like, "well, like, part of it is you gotta, you gotta embrace and trust the process that, that if you really do exercise that personal responsibility, which can can be exhausting, right? It does, it puts a lot more on the participant." But if you kind of embrace it and kind of can lean into it, that, that coworker has since had much better experiences with open space, um, to the point where he's almost like, uh, an advocate. So again, those people can be turned around, but you have to have a community around you to kind of be like, Like, maybe try it again, or maybe this is how you can navigate an open space differently to maybe have a more effective, more pleasant, more useful experience.

[00:54:51] Allan Stewart: I found that social skills are a lot like other kinds of skills. You got to practice them if you want to have a good time. That's so true.

[00:55:00] Will Munn: I think that I don't remember if we talked about this with this group, but one other thing about the online events is, you know, it's always possible for some other aspect of your life to get in the way of the event while you're in it and pull you away. Because technically you're sitting at your computer. Maybe you get an email. Maybe you get a message from your boss. Who knows what it is? And those things can potentially pull you away if you allow them. So a good practice, of course, block off your calendar if you're going to attend an open space event and maybe go on do not disturb mode on some things. But that is certainly something that can take away from it.

[00:55:41] Mike Clement: Right. So the flip side of like not being a traditional conference is that open space sessions are generally not recorded, like at least not in any of the events that I have been participating in. Because there's an amount of openness that happens as a result of people not feeling like they're on the record. That being said, oftentimes there are what's called in open space technology proceedings that are generated as part of the event. And so there may be notes and different things that you can have access to afterwards. But it's not like, I was thinking about this in terms of being interrupted and going away, is that, like, if you get interrupted and get pulled away at an open space event, you know, you, you miss the event. Whereas with a traditional conference, like it's probably recorded, you're probably gonna have access to the recording later. Like, so that's a downside, I guess, or not. It's a feature, not a bug.

[00:56:46] Allan Stewart: So if anybody listening has not yet tried an OpenSpace conference, do you have some suggestions for them of places they could go? I know that the three of you are hosting or helping organize a couple different OpenSpace conferences. Do you want to tell us about them?

[00:57:03] Will Munn: I can talk about one of them, and I'm sure Amy could as well. But we are hosting the Engineering Leadership Summit, which is an open space conference. You can find out more information at elsummit.com. And, um, yeah, we, we have one coming up in October, uh, and it is planned to be a twice annually, did I get it right that time, twice annually, uh, twice yearly event. Uh, so we had our first one this last spring, and it was really great. Uh, we had, had quite a lot of people show up, um, folks ranging from, you you know, like senior engineer all the way to VPs and CTOs and things like that. And it was really quite an event. And so we decided we'd do more of them. And so, yeah, that's coming up. If you're an engineering leader, then we'd love to see you there. I know there are a lot of other events, and I'm going to let somebody else talk about some of them. But, yeah. Lots of options.

[00:58:17] Mike Clement: Yeah. One thing around the Engineering Leadership Summit, Dave mentioned, you know, that often there's a theme or at least something that's kind of organizing around it. We're really wanting to focus on managers, directors, and staff plus engineers, people who have like an organizational wide view in terms of the technology, not just the technology organization, but the whole organization, right? And so we're thinking about beyond their own team or their own code base or their own, like, how you name a variable or organize the code at that level. Maybe thinking about software architecture or larger scale design, as well as organizational design, multiple team interactions, those types of things. So that's kind of where that particular event is at. I also organize the Software Crafters on Conference with a couple other people, which is an online event, more in those weeds of like, how do we best name things? How do we make sure our code files in a way that we can figure out, you know, the structure of the code easily. But also, a lot of that ends up being very interpersonal as well. How do you interact as a team? But it's more that team level, that individual contributor level than the organization level. There are several other in-person and online events. There's the Socrates series, which is kind of a loose confederation of events that's mostly in Europe that I actually pulled from in order to start the Software Crafters on Conference, which was originally an in-person event but is now online. There's the Agile Open events that are on the West Coast. There's Agile Open Northwest, which is usually in the spring and alternates between Portland and Seattle. And there's Agile Open SoCal, which is usually in Irvine. It's actually in a couple of weeks. I'm sure there are many, many others that I don't know about, but those are the few that I kind of know about.

[01:00:24] Amy Dredge: They've covered them well. The Engineering Leadership Summit is the one that I'm closely involved in. I'm a co-organizer of. And the first time was a great event, and I'm really looking forward to this next one on October 24th.

[01:00:37] Dave Adsit: So Allan and I have talked a lot about the importance of doing the right thing with the right tools at the right time, right? That's the whole theme of the podcast. I have found that open space technology is the right thing to do at the right time often. I've found that it's been very valuable to me throughout my career in different contexts, whether the context is a large conference or working with my organization on improving how we collaborate together. And I would encourage everyone to take the opportunity to get out and experience an open space conference. And if you can't find one that speaks to you, go watch a couple of videos to figure out the exact logistics and create your own. Anybody can have their own open space conference if you, if you decide to host one yourself, you are the right people. So let's go out and do it.