When the participants make their choices about priorities, they will feel, and some will say, that there is a real difficulty here. Since everything is interrelated, how do you choose one over another, and having made that choice, do you then forget all the other issues? Just because something didn't make it to the top of the heap, does that make it unimportant?

This difficulty can be resolved by emphasizing to everybody…that this is not a political win/lose situation. Lower-ranked issues are by no means lost, after all they are in the book. What does happen during the process of prioritization is that the finite number of genuine hot points, major concerns, or, as the Canadians are wont to say, "wicked issues" are identified. These hot points represent focal areas where useful work needs to be done. Thus when one considers the results of the prioritization, a limited numbers of issues will just pop to the top.

Harrison Owen, H.H. Owen & Company
Potomac, Maryland, USA
http://www.openspaceworld.com
Excerpted from Open Space Technology: A User's Guide
1997, Berrett-Koehler, Publishers

This is an issue I am very interested in - I thought about convergence in the events I have experienced. It seems to me there are some factors that affect convergence much more than the method used.

For example how pressing the group feels the issue is that needs to be resolved, or how much the group feels like a community, how much time is available. No to mention how conducive the place you are is for drinking yet another bottle of wine in the evening.

But it also seems to me that apart from that it takes some groups a lot more effort to become practical. Doctors, nurses and policemen for example seem quite good at it - for which I am happy when I am in a situation I need their help for. Groups of professors rather more slow.

Gerard Muller, Open Space Institute Denmark
Greve, Denmark
gm@openspace.dk

My sense is that it is wise for the facilitator to be flexible and responsive to the group's energy as the closing circle draws near. Larry [Peterson] describes a "twice-around" closing circle, where the second round invites people to express commitments for future actions. I am also fascinated with Jeff [Aitken]'s offering about inviting people to write individual commitments, and then to group these and open the space for short action planning meetings.

Chris Weaver, Springbranch Facilitation
Asheville, North Carolina, USA
http://www.springbranch.net

Jeff Aitken
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
tzimtzum@earthlink.net

Convergence seems to me to be a very important part of any transformational process. Open Space (OS) and other group interventions for that matter are generally done with the intent or hope that some form of change to the present state will occur.

The closing circle and convergence are two complementary but different levels of closure to the exploration created by OS. Convergence provides a focus, a concrete stepping stone for the future. Some groups who had experienced OS without convergence said they felt the meeting ended with a long shopping list and no way to answer collectively the question "What now?"

For a given meeting, a group may really just want to explore but I always try to incorporate a way of doing some minimal convergence, even at an individual basis (people writing an interest / commitment down for themselves). It is important to announce to participants at the outset that some form of convergence is planned as this can affect their discussions.

When the end of the event comes, we need to be attentive to people's energy and flexible on the methods for convergence used. The methods described in a previous message are interesting.

• "Twice around the circle": with a talking piece, first round about personal commitment for action and a second round to bring closure by speaking about personal experience or impressions of the event. This would work well with relatively small groups, maybe less with large groups because of the time and attention factor.
• "Writing, then grouping individual commitments for planning": I have used this method with groups of 20 and 200 people and it worked well. Participants who wish to invite others to a discussion on their topic get a post-it for a meeting site and announce the topic and location. If clustering topics on the wall is desired: with a larger group you can have a small task force of people who are knowledgeable of the issues quickly regroup topics that participants would not have already regrouped. Then the facilitator reads out loud of few topics of each cluster to communicate and validate its general theme. A post-it is assigned to each cluster and interested participants meet to plan on that issue. People can also do individual planning on the issue of their choice if they wish to.

Diane Gibeault
Diane Gibeault & Associé.es/Associates, Ottawa, Canada
http://www.dianegibeault.com

I have "converged" the reports from the self-organizing part into teams rather than the whole organization. That client wanted to strengthen team development and priority setting. The teams set priorities for their own work based on the Open Space reports, and there were many teams with 500 people. They covered many of the reports and did have the freedom to continue work on those back at the organization. I also see people using many different types of processes for the focusing of the energy that has emerged. Trees, mind-maps, priority setting (in a variety of ways), small groups (self-selected usually) or "another" opening of the space. I have had real success closing the Open Space and then moving into a process that helps participants focus their energy and determine next steps.

Larry Peterson, Larry Peterson & Associates in Transformation
Toronto, Canada
http://www.spiritedorg.com