On average how many interesting speeches you remember from each conference you attended? And how many of them were just waste of your time?
As time is money, in Apiumtech we decided to have Open Space every friday
in order to provide interesting conversations for our team members.
Open Space is a meeting that creates engaging experience for all people by ensuring that attendees always have the most interesting conversation possible, which they can choose by themselves.
The emphasis is on real-time discussion, instead of listening to boring speeches, that are even not of your interest. This is an excellent opportunity to learn from your colleagues, who knows more than you in some areas of work.
Open Space is a simple methodology, that is focused on participation by people who have a passion for the topics to be discussed. It allows groups of people to interact in a simple, productive, organized way to create valuable dialogs that address the participants’ most important issues. Our team members send emails during the week proposing topics to discuss on Friday and topics, that are the most repetitive are the ones that are raised the first during Apiumtech open space meeting, but there is no agenda planned, no lists of topics, only time slots and a space in the main meeting room where interested participants propose topics that they would like to discuss in real time.
Sometimes we even couldn’t think how conversations could be deep and live in Open Space.
Each Open Space experience is unique in some way. Topics can differ from project management to microservices. Quite often topics are raised during the conversation, that were off the radar of the original meeting, this spontaneity is part of the benefit.
Why Friday? During the week our team members face several issues, that they would like to discuss and ask opinion of others. This is the right place to do it. For example if you struggle with time estimation, probably it will be interesting for all the team and many of them could share their way of doing it.
Our team is very excited about having open space every week, we always have full attendance even though some of our software developers may work in the client’s office, they come to Apiumtech office in the afternoon to discuss the “hot” issues.
What is so good about it is that all of the issues that are most important to our team will be raised and included in the agenda.
It doesn’t matter if you contribute a little or a lot. And you’ll probably be surprised that you may know something that others may not. Everyone has something to give, whether they know it or not, even if it’s the “beginner’s mind” that asks the right questions. The result is a more participative and energetic event, where everyone highlights something useful for him or for her.
