Christine has organized and facilitated Open Space Technology events in Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and North America, including the largest Open Space meeting held in the USA for more than sixteen hundred National Delegates to the 2005 Girl Scout National Convention.
Open Space Technology enables all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to collectively create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance.
Whether it's a small group or the entire system, working in one-day workshops, three-day conferences, or the regular weekly staff meeting, the common results of Open Space are improved communication, creative solutions, enhanced collaboration and increased productivity.
In Open Space gatherings, participants have the opportunity to host sessions on topics related to the theme or convening question for the event. Within the first hour, participants have created the agenda and organized into self-managed groups. All those who share interest in a posted discussion topic get together to work on it. In this way collaboration becomes intensely appealing and the potential for commitment is increased because participants have taken ownership of issues and opportunities.
Since 1983, when Open Space Technology creator Harrison Owen discovered that the most generative conversations tended to take place on the coffee breaks rather than in the meeting itself, over 80,000 Open Space meetings around the globe have unleased the power of self-organization.
While Open Space is known for its apparent lack of structure and welcoming of surprises, it turns out that the Open Space meeting or organization is actually very structured - but because that structure perfectly fits the people and the work at hand, that it goes unnoticed in its proper role of supporting (not blocking) best work. In fact, the stories and work plans woven in Open Space are generally more complex, more robust, more durable - and can move a great deal faster than expert or management-driven designs. Participants leave Open Space events committed to the action they most care about moving forward.
| 
