These last few days, Mike and Ivana have proposed that I hold with them the open space (Harrison Owen’s Open Space) for the upcoming ALE2015 conference (a conference that remains, in my eyes, in my heart, my favorite each year: I meet up with friends and fascinating people there (Mike, Olaf, Alberto, Pawel, Stephen, Duarte, etc.), discussing my favorite topics, all mixed together in a big European melting pot.

Open Agile Adoption > Open Space

In short, Mike proposes that I hold the Open Space with Ivana. My first reaction is mixed. I’m a bit tired of Open Spaces at conferences given the intensity and impact that I experience through Open Agile Adoption (proposed and founded by Dan Mezick two years ago). The concrete, operational aspect, the cycles, make Open Agile Adoption far more stimulating than Open Spaces, which I nonetheless love very much.

Actually it’s not that Open Agile Adoption is better, since it’s based on Open Space, but that it complements it perfectly and that the framework of an organization gives it a new dimension.

So I propose to Mike and Ivana that we move toward an Open Agile Adoption (an Open Space with additional elements that seem key to me): provide a theme, set constraints, consolidate a booklet (pdf) at the end, make an appointment for next year, and also my few adjustments.

A few adjustments to Open Agile Adoption

Conduct sessions of 1 hour including 40 minutes of brainstorming and 20 minutes of collective feedback with all the groups (I saw that this practice differed from Dan’s and that he was interested in it).

I’ve also recently been proposing “change stories” to consolidate in a somewhat more standardized way (not too much either for those who know me well, standardizing is quite foreign to me) what has emerged from the brainstorming.

Change Story, or in English (thanks Mark Sheffield), Change Story (directly inspired in format by our session with Oana on storytelling, and which seemed to flow naturally when I tried to standardize the emergences from brainstorming).

But it’s ALE, for crying out loud

But it’s difficult to envision this with ALE: it’s not a company, but a group of oddballs who disperse (the group) to reform every year. You can impose these salutary and creative constraints (the container liberates, a paradox) on a company (theme, constraints, etc.), but it becomes coercive in another environment. So I doubt their relevance in open conferences, even more so at ALE2015 which is totally open, and where the participants’ maturity is quite high.

The meme space

But while this question of Open Space at ALE is running through my head, I woke up one morning last week with the following idea: why not use Open Space as Dan Mezick was able to do within his Open Agile Adoption, but in an attempt to see things differently. Seeing things differently is much more and better linked to ALE2015. Using Open Space for workshops like Design Thinking or Lean Startup is also very trendy.

Parenthesis on the current success of Design Thinking

Companies, organizations struggle with Agile, for plenty of valid reasons, unfortunately the most common one isn’t: they generally don’t give themselves the means to succeed, quite simply because they don’t really want to; it too often calls into question much of what they are and what they have been, of what their men and women are, and have been. So everyone launches into Lean Startup and especially now Design Thinking in laboratory mode, in cell mode, in isolated, protected mode, where they can dare to try, to experiment. Unfortunately without integrating the entire structure, this will often prove hollow.

However, this success is fine with me if we’re aware that it won’t remain a laboratory, Design Thinking is yet another different way of calling the same thing. Agile, Lean Startup, etc.

The meme space (continued)

So this morning I tell myself: let’s use Open Space (Harrison Owen’s) which has shown how rich a source it is. Let’s introduce disruptive brainstorming elements to better think differently, let’s bring things back to a somewhat more standardized output container as I’ve been able to do with “change stories” (see above). And so I proposed to ALE2015: The meme space (The Meme Space).

What is a Meme?

A Meme is – like genes – the smallest carrier of meaning in our cultures and our reflections. If genes carry our physical characteristics, memes transmit our cultural characteristics. Like genes, they evolve, are transmitted, some have anomalies that make them disappear or conversely become dominant, etc.

Wikipedia tells us (in English, in French): “it’s a recognizable cultural element replicated and transmitted by imitation of one individual’s behavior by other individuals”. A cultural element transmitted otherwise than by genetics. Richard Dawkins, who is the father of the expression, specifies: “Unit of information contained in a brain, exchangeable within a society”. Cultures evolve like living beings. Cultural element meaning it can be an idea (the scrumboard for example), or a behavior (the long hair of hard rock bands from the 80s, as another example).

The objective of this space is to try to mutate the memes of our culture.

In explaining the steps below, I assume that you’re familiar with Harrison Owen’s Open Spaces, or even Dan Mezick’s Open Agile Adoption.

Step 1: “meme board”

Like games such as The Big Idea or Give them a hot tub, we prepare a wall of memes, a “meme board”, with three columns. In the first column we place memes from our culture (scrum, kanban, invitation, visualization, teams, meeting, value, integrity, transparency, etc.), in the second adjectives (fast, slow, easy, dangerous, serious, sad, powerful, red, green, etc), in the third objects and places from our world (phone, escalator, Great Wall of China, car, etc). Don’t hesitate, like any brainstorming, to not limit your tangents and wild ideas. Let’s say in each column 50 to 100 elements. I imagine that you can arrive with a ready-made list, but having it completed by the people present seems natural to me.

Step 2: open forum marketplace

Everyone takes the time to look carefully at the wall of memes, you ask people who wish (we naturally keep the most important element of Open Agile Adoption: invitation) to choose a triad (one element from each column). This choice must be made by intuition, with the gut, by instinct, no question of pre-calculating a mutation. When someone has an intuition they take the triad and place it on the marketplace.

Thus like the exquisite corpses of our dear surrealists, let’s first let the creature appear, the meaning will come later. (Even if it means ending up with an object from the famous catalog of unobtainable objects by Jacques Carelman)

Step 3: the brainstorming sessions

Open Space tracks of 1 hour, which actually last 40 minutes, and require, as in the Open Spaces I facilitate: a global “flash” feedback (1 or 2min) at the end of the track. For example 10 groups each coming for 1min to the front of the stage to summarize the fruit of their reflection. I’ve noted that this feeds subsequent reflections, or even generates the abandonment or relaunch of topics.

Furthermore, my advice for this kind of exercise: the triads having been chosen by instinct and the group (did I mention I encourage a maximum of 8 people since beyond that the dynamic changes?) having formed on the fly, I suggest starting by simply listing what it evoked in each person before going further.

Step 4: Consolidation and the mutation canvas

As I’ve been doing for some time with Open Spaces, I propose an output canvas for brainstorming, which allows me to very quickly (the evening or the next day) distribute a pdf that’s somewhat coherent across the different sessions. This is still too recent (Sunday morning), I need to think about this “mutation canvas”. But I imagine it should be quite light (4/5 fields max): environment? Modification of information (modification, substitution, creation, deletion), which elements? For what purpose? Key element of the mutation? Actors?

Step 5: cycle and viability of the mutation

As in an Open Agile Adoption a cyclical approach would allow testing, trying the viability of the mutation.

Finally, still as in an Open Agile Adoption, we can imagine a theme and constraints, even if that’s more foreign to the notion of genetic accident, and therefore of “memetic accident”.

ALE 2015?

I don’t know if Mike and Ivana will agree, and so I don’t know if I’ll be able to try the first “meme space” in Sofia (Bulgaria) this summer, in August, (there are still spots available: ALE2015). This “mutation-oriented destructuring” (concept spontaneously invented without particular substance) seems relevant to me, on the board at least, let’s see how it behaves when plunged into the broth of real life.

PS: we could almost call it a “Mutation Park”

PS2: imagined under the influence of the box set: Live at Felt Forum (New York 1970) by the Doors