Spot on, Scott! It is not enough to be just OPEN!
Still, it brought to mind lessons learned numerous times at Northern Voice and Open Ed, that “open” isn’t the same as “inviting,” and that if organizers really do want to grow a movement, real care has to be paid to how we bring newcomers into the fold.
Ah Seth, we know the troll of which you speaketh in your blog post, Seth’s Blog: A field guide to the Meeting Troll.
In response, here are the people I want to invite into the circle. (See, I even avoided the word “meeting” as we have so many coded “dirty words!”)
Come into the circle with me.
Community indicators are everywhere, including embedded in how we design and participate in our online spaces. Read the whole blog post, ok?
Creating delightful, inviting spaces is simple, but not easy. Unfortunately, we often make it unnecessarily complicated. I don’t expect most workspaces to have wide open, reconfigurable spaces with natural light on two sides and moveable whitewalls and furniture. But why can’t all workspaces have signs like this? How many actually do?
via Eugene Eric Kim » Three Simple Hacks for Making Delightful Virtual Spaces.
I love the word “delightful!” Thanks, Eugene! (And Katie, the community person at the Standford D School!)
From a Facebook post the students in Eric Tsui’s class at Hong Kong Polytechnic sent me this amazing thank you note. (Paper version, I’m told, is on the way!) Now THIS is a great community indicator. I get up early and late to deliver online webinar guest presentations. Rarely do you get this kind of feedback. I love it. Click the images to see more detail! Thank Eric and to all in your class. I’m smiling in Seattle.
Via Johnnie Moore (thanks!) comes something that is remarkably akin to the Liberating Structures approach I’ve been diving into deeply.
2 degrees of separation – 100%Open.
And so recently, we’ve prototyped an exercise at various workshops and events called ’2 degrees of separation’ that has worked so remarkably well that a) I wanted to share it and b) see if anybody can help prove exactly how it works. The way we have run it to date is as follows:
In a room of at least 30 people, ask everybody to think of a project or problem they are working on right now where what would really help them is to be introduced to a specific person or organisation.
Invite people to then take it in turns to shout out the name of who they are trying to reach, and also to briefly introduce themselves (if necessary) and why they want this introduction.
Ask the whole group if anybody knows that person or organisation directly, or might know how to reach them, and if so to raise their hands.
If so, just point them out to each other so they can chat afterwards and repeat the process a few times.
We’ve now done this exercise 3 or 4 times with group sizes varying from about 30 to nearly 100 and every single time we’ve been able to make a productive connection. And whilst I thought it would probably work I am struck how well it has worked so far.