Hi Sue,

We are planning on following a format similar to CITCON (see
http://www.citconf.com) in which people will propose topics Friday
evening. We will put these topics on sticky notes and participants
can add their votes about what interests them, and the topics will be
placed on a schedule for Saturday. (Depending on the number of
participants and topics, we will have three to four concurrent
sessions going throughout the day Saturday.) Participants can propose
new topics and shuffle the schedule as the day progresses.
Participants are also encouraged to apply the Law of Two Feet and move
from one break-out group to another as they see fit.

LAWST-style workshops are small peer workshops of (usually) 20 or
fewer people and are focused on specific issues. LAWST is the Los
Altos Workshop on Software Testing. The first workshop was held about
11 years ago and I've heard there have now been over 200 such
workshops in the software testing world. There are currently a number
of somewhat regularly scheduled regional and topical workshops. I've
been to a handful of these and will be posting links to existing
workshops on the FROSST web site as they are announced. These
workshops are hosted by 'content owners' that care about the subject
matter and facilitated by trained facilitators that help keep things
flowing toward the content owner(s)'s goals. Although the site looks
a bit outdated, there is some information on LAWST workshops at
http://www.lawst.com .

Ben


--- In frosstcon@yahoogroups.com, "sue.uyetake" <sue.uyetake@...> wrote:
>
> Greetings! Opening a Topic to discuss the topics. Then we can open a
> topic on each topic.
> ---
> [Methodology to create topics and to update progress frequently]
> [Sue's Thoughts] I think this is how the conference could go:
> everybody meet and whiteboard the Areas of Interest, then group off
> into each "Parallel Track" and discuss topics within their area of
> interest. Let's scrum it and keep reporting back as a huge group every
> two hours to scrum (ten minute limit - keep your Running Shoes on)
> what has been discussed and what will be discussed in each Track. Also
> end some Tracks into a post-conference group and start more Tracks.
> That way people can "switch Tracks" every two hours if desired to
> inject new energy into each. All participants can know the Track
> Topics started/stopped/elongated and sign up at the end of the day for
> the post-conference groups gathering for the following months.
>
> ---
> I agree with Ben that these discussions can easily launch
> special-interest followup groups that meet locally and regularly in
> the following months. Have to look up his LAWSST(?) term after I post
> this..
>
> ---
> [Open Space Basics 101] Here is the blurb from the author of Open
> Space, Michael Herman. It's dated 1998, so I'm not sure if it's been
> used recently.
>
> "In Open Space meetings, events and organizations, participants create
> and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a
> central theme of strategic importance, such as: What is the strategy,
> group, organization or community that all stakeholders can support and
> work together to create?" - Michael Herman, 1998.
> ---
>