People tell me Open Space cannot possibly work online. You lose the energy in the room, the body language, those moments at the coffee machine where the real conversations happen. I used to think exactly that myself. When everything suddenly had to move online in 2020, I assumed it would be a stopgap, a watered-down version of the real thing. What I have since learned is that it is not worse and not better. It is different, and it works on its own terms.
What the proceedings show
An analysis of twenty-two proceeding documents spanning 1994 to 2025 traces a real shift in how the community has related to technology. Back in 1996 there was open resistance, captured in titles like “Cyberspace and world crime” and “Don’t forsake face-to-face!” — the community was openly skeptical of working online. Something changed in 2015, when the first Virtual OSonOS ran with sixty participants on the QiqoChat platform, a twenty-four-hour format that pulled people in from across the world and proved the format could hold. By 2024, Istanbul saw an experiment with the AI tool Dembrane, recording, transcribing and analyzing conversations as they happened. The question the community asks now is no longer whether it works. It is how to do it well.
What I have learned facilitating it myself
I have facilitated online Open Space with QiqoChat, including at XP Days Benelux in 2021, and with Zoom breakout rooms, including for an online meetup on Sociocracy 3.0 in Belgium. Yes, it works, but only once you know how. The burning question matters even more online: without a question that truly occupies people, attention drains faster than it does in a physical room, which means the intention behind the session has to be sharper than ever. The other lesson was to create conditions rather than impose a script — give people the freedom to pick their own breakout room, the way they would choose where to stand in a physical space, favor motivation over obligation, and keep a “lounge” or “hangout” room open where people can linger without an agenda. People still follow the energy online: in Zoom or QiqoChat, participants choose which room to enter, and the Law of Two Feet holds just as well on a screen as in a hall. If a conversation stops serving you, you move.
Connection is different, not missing
Something real is lost online: the handshake, the smell of coffee, walking together to the next room. But a different kind of connection takes its place. People who are usually quieter speak up more in chat or in a breakout room, focus sharpens because the outside world intrudes less, and side-conversations run in the chat parallel to whatever is happening out loud. This is not a replacement for the room. It is a genuine alternative, and once people are actually motivated to take part, whether the format is physical or online stops mattering as much as you would expect.
Anyone curious enough to test this can do it in fifteen minutes with a team. Ask one question, “what do we want to talk about,” open three breakout rooms, let people choose freely, and after ten minutes invoke the Law of Two Feet so anyone can switch. What happens in that choosing, who speaks more than they usually would, how the energy in the room actually feels: that is online self-organization at its smallest scale.
The tools, and why the platform matters less than it seems
Zoom with breakout rooms works well as long as there are more rooms than you think you will need, and as long as one of them is a lounge or hangout space people can drift into. QiqoChat was built specifically for virtual Open Space and lets participants open and close rooms themselves, supporting a full twenty-four-hour format with people joining from anywhere. Miro or any whiteboard tool covers the “news wall” where people post their session proposals, and the visual layout helps people orient online in a way text alone does not. Microsoft Teams can work too, though it is less flexible for spontaneous switching and asks for more technical support behind the scenes.
What actually matters more than the platform: is there a burning question that truly occupies people, can people choose where they go, do they want to participate or merely have to, and do they feel safe enough to speak. When those four are in place, it works, online or in a room. When they are not, it does not work in a room either.
Hybrid: the difficult middle ground
I have to admit I do not enjoy hybrid meetings myself. It went wrong most often when a cluster of people sat physically together around one shared screen in a room while everyone else joined individually online: that physical cluster started talking among themselves, and I lost my grip on the conversation as a remote facilitator. The fix is not paying closer attention, it is the setup itself: every participant connects individually, including the people sharing a room, or the group agrees explicit rules that anyone sitting together still joins the conversation on their own. Virtual Open Space works best when every participant is truly on their own, not clustered. When part of a group is in the room and the rest is online, something like a two-tier split appears: the physical group has side conversations the online group never hears, the online group starts to feel left out, and the energy divides between the two. It can work, but it demands unusually good facilitation, an online buddy for every physical table, constant attention paid to whoever is online, and a technical setup that runs perfectly, which rarely happens. My own preference is to pick one format, physical or online, and treat hybrid as a last resort, not a default.
It stopped being a stopgap
In 2020, online was an emergency fix. It is a legitimate option now. Online tends to work better when participants are spread across countries, when mobility limits attendance, when less travel time buys more time for the actual content, or when the carbon footprint matters to the group. Physical still tends to work better for a first meeting, for deep team building, or for topics carrying real emotional weight. The skill is choosing what fits the question in front of you, not what fits the current hype.
I facilitate Open Space both online and in person, with QiqoChat, Zoom and other platforms, building on thirty years of proceedings and his own experience in the field.
Source note: based on analysis of twenty-two World Open Space on Open Space proceeding documents (1994-2025), specifically OS96 (resistance), VOS15 (first virtual edition), WOS23 (questions on hybrid) and WOS24 (AI experiment).
“When it’s over, it’s over” holds online too. Sometimes even more so, since nobody has to clean up the room afterward.