The four underlying principles of Open Space Technology are:

1. Whoever comes is the right people (because they cared enough to attend)
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have (don’t worry about what happens)
3. Whenever it starts is the right time (the lack of schedule or structure emphasises creativity and innovation)
4. When it’s over, it’s over (which also means that if you aren’t getting anything out of a meeting, you should leave)

The basic ideas of both is that if you get people interested in a shared idea together and give them the freedom to interact openly with each other, then great results will happen. For Open Space Technology, this is applied to meetings. One example of meetings that use the precepts from Open Space Technology are unconferences (also called BarCamps). The same concepts also apply to things like “water cooler conversations” and other situations that encourage serendipitous interaction.

Similar ideas are the foundation of our Open Tech Space project — the creation of common spaces that allow people who are passionate about specific projects to interact in random ways.

For further reading on Open Space Technologies see the Wikipedia page,
http://processarts.wagn.org/wagn/Open_Space_Technology or http://www.openspaceworld.org/cgi/wiki.cgi?AboutOpenSpace