"The village marketplace" - participants at the Valjevo Open Space conference in 2002

 look at the topics proposed for discussion.

Open space is a way of holding a meeting that allows the people present to decide what is most important to them. The convener identifies a particular question, and participants then identify the particular topic they want to talk about by writing it on a piece of paper and posting it on a wall or board. When everyone has identified their topics, all the participants look at the agenda they have just developed, and decide which groups they want to participate in. For a more detailed view of how Open Space Technology works, look at Open Space Techology - A User's Guide. For more information about the Open Space network, have a look at Open Space Institute.

Harrison Owen explains the Open Space concept to 150 participants

in Valjevo in 2002. It was not long before people moved into the centre

of the circle to propose topics they wanted to discuss. Half an hour

after Harrison spoke, all the groups were busy with their discussions,

and after two days, they identified six key priorities for CRDA in Western Serbia.

In 2002, Harrison Owen came to Valjevo, Serbia, to lead an open space conference for 150 participants on the topic of "what kind of western Serbia would you love to live in in 2007?" This was the first time the participants had seen Open Space in action, and it did not take long before people were enthusiastically racing into the centre of the circle, writing topics on paper, calling out the name of their topic, and posting the topic on the wall. In less than half an hour, all the groups were meeting. By the end of the two days of the meeting, participants had discussed a wide range of topics. Using a technique called "dotmocracy", each participant was able to identify which of those topics was the most important to them. Some people had been skeptical about whether Open Space would work in Serbia, but the results were very convincing. Several months later, Open Space also worked effectively to help young people at a camp in Gostilje, in western Serbia, to identify projects they wanted to work on.

Youth representatives chosen by CRDA community committees in Western Serbia

use Open Space to discuss projects, during a youth proposal-development camp

held at Gostilje in the summer of 2003.

Open Space Technology has been used a number of times since then in Serbia. In 2006, Elwin Guild facilitated an Open Space conference in Novi Sad to promote heritage festivals and tourism, that ran for 2 1/2 days and had more than 100 participants. He asked Serbians who worked with him on the organization to talk about what they had seen. I have edited Darja's comments, which were posted on the Open Space discussion network.

From the very beginning of the first day, I was surprised and impressed with the new and fresh approach to holding conferences and seminars (many of which I attended in the past and died of boredom). Also, my initial scepticism slowly started to melt away after I saw how people became inspired and enthusiastic (though a little confused, perhaps) to embrace this new methodology and make the most out of the freedom that was suddenly handed to them. On the first day, the first person to stand up and post the name of the workshop to be held was a woman, and soon after, 90% of the people present rushed to do same. Over the following two days, I was again impressed and surprised by the number of people showing up at 9:00am each morning and staying until late at night discussing in informal groups issues of interest to them. I kept trying to warn Elwin that most of the people wouldn't show up the next day, and that on the last day there would probably not be more than 10 people for the closing of the conference. But again, I was wrong - I believe that some 80% of the people who initially showed up came for the closing (and some of them came to me earlier to say that they wouldn't be able to make it, as they had to travel long distances and would have to leave earlier). Their closing words were, once again, more positive that I could have anticipated.