Open Source at #cnmac12

I was very excited to see that the organisers of the Christian New Media Awards and Conference have decided to include an Open Source session at the 2012 conference. I was even more exited to be asked to facilitate the session.

Some of you experienced first hand my explosion of excitement about this via social media or through the anewloom blog where I’ve been sharing my research on unconference techniques (of which open source is a major player). I shared a couple of days after agreeing to facilitate, that the session is likely to be a fish bowl discussion. I have had a number of tweets asking what open source and fish bowl discussions actually are, so this post will hopefully go some way to explain…

The term open source began as a way to describe software source code and the collaborative model for how it’s developed, … {the} open source principles {are}: Openness. Transparency. Collaboration. Diversity. Rapid prototyping. The open source way is more than a development model; it defines a culture. A culture that includes everyone, and harnesses real experiences to solve problems.

The open source way is about possibility. Open source presents a new way to solve old problems. To share ideas and effort. The open source way opens doors. Open source offers a new perspective. Open, not closed. Collaboration, not isolation. The open source way multiplies. Knowledge. Effort. Inspiration. Creativity. Innovation. The impact is exponential. (take from opensource.com)

So, Open Source is about bringing people together to share ideas in an open environment that encourages collaboration and creativity… Sounds good right?! At #cnmac12 we will only have a 40 minute session (I’m not complaining, after all they have gone out on a limb to try something new…) so how can we maximise this time to give as many people as possible a voice on a particular theme?

My suggestion is that we have a fish bowl discussion. I explained this in more detail over at the anewloom blog but here is short explanation.

A fishbowl conversation is a form of dialog that can be used when discussing topics within large groups. The advantage of Fishbowl is that it allows the entire group to participate in a conversation. Four to five chairs are arranged in an inner circle. This is the fishbowl. The remaining chairs are arranged in concentric circles outside the fishbowl. A few participants are selected to fill the fishbowl leaving one chair empty, while the rest of the group sit on the chairs outside the fishbowl. The facilitator introduces the topic and the participants in the fishbowl start discussing. The audience outside the fishbowl listen in on the discussion and any member of the audience can, at any time, occupy the empty chair and join the fishbowl. When this happens, an existing member of the fishbowl must voluntarily leave the fishbowl and free a chair. The discussion continues with participants frequently entering and leaving the fishbowl.

The fish bowl discussions I have been involved in have been on a variety of topics, with different numbers of people and in a range of environments but they have all been BRILLIANT – engaging, dynamic and creative.

So what is the ‘old problem’ that we want to discuss at #cnmac12? What is it that we want to throw ideas around about? I think it makes a lot of sense to follow the theme of storytelling from the conference programme but do you have particular problems you need to solve? I’m not even going to give examples here as the idea is for everyone to contribute… so, it’s over to you! we have 40 minutes on the day and I’d like to have a shortlist of discussion points to work from. Please use the comment function on this blog to share your suggestions…

By way of conclusion – I feel that open source ideals (along with many other unconference techniques) could be put to much better use within church and Christian circles – if you have had experience of fish bowl discussions or any of the other things I’ve researched (see anewloom blog) I would welcome a discussion with you – perhaps we could grab a cuppa during #cnmac12?