I am familiar with Open Space. The technique I describe is similar, yet different in important ways.

The main difference is in the selection of the “corners.” In Open Space, anyone can talk about anything. I find it to be a bit slow and unwieldy at times.

With Speaker’s Corner, it is integrated with more traditional brainstorming work. By gathering lists of topics in advance of the breakouts, and having everyone vote on the most important topics, you get some quick momentum. I use Speaker’s Corner when I want results quickly. In as little as 30 minutes, you can generate lots of ideas and build momentum.

My rule of thumb is to get the group generating as many ideas as possible before and at the beginning of the meeting. Then we have them, as a group, select the most popular topics (using a variety of convergence techniques). The number of corners we select is typically the number of people divided by 8. If the group is smaller, you can have more corners. For example, if there are 40 people, we would have 5 corners. If there are 12 people, we might still have as many as 3 or 4 corners.

To be clear, I think Open Space is a great technique. It is truly a goal-free, free-market approach. I find it is perfect when you have more time and when you are working with divergent groups of people coming together. When I work with corporations, the Speaker’s Corner section is a small part of the day. And most of the team members can quickly align behind a number of key issues.

Steve