Wed, Feb 23, 2005
Hiding the Agenda
#
Before last weekend's sprint, several
people approached me about the agenda. I responded by offering a
general overview of the weekend (Friday, meet each other and plan for
Saturday; Saturday, test, analyze, and maybe implement; Sunday,
wrap-up), but I did not offer anything more detailed than that. It
made many people nervous, but all I could do was to ask folks to trust
me. Why the secrecy? Was I being coy, or was I just disorganized? (ICV)
For highly interactive events with large, diverse groups, I've found
that the best processes do not share agendas with participants. There
are two reasons for this. First, you want the participants to focus
on the work. The facilitators (or in the case of MGTaylor, the
KreW) watch the clock for you. Second, you want flexibility in the
agenda, so that you can self-organize. On the one hand, participants
hate meetings that waste your time. On the other hand, they tend to
freak out when they see, "To be planned later." It's not lack of
organization, it's an acknowledgement of self-organization. You have
to be really confident in your process to make it work. (ICW)
''Leaping
the Abyss'', a book about the MGTaylor process coauthored by
BlueOxen advisor, ChrisPeterson, has a
great story about why agendas aren't given in advance, and what
effect this can have on participants. (ICX)
If your design and facilitation are good, it works beautifully.
Several people approached me after the event saying how skeptical they
were during and at the beginning of the event, and how amazed they
were afterwards about how it all came together. (ICY)
AllenGunn (Gunner), our facilitator, is
good,
maybe even a little cocky. On the morning of the first day, he was
constantly throwing out statements like, "We'll make it up as we go
along." I'd laugh to myself and cringe at the same time when I heard
him say this, but I knew what he was doing and kept my mouth shut. As
Gunner explained to someone afterwards, in a way, he's hustling the
crowd. But, as I noted to the same person, you can only get away with
hustling if you win. (ICZ)
/collaboration |
Posted at 6:45pm
FLOSS Usability Sprint Redux
#
We wrapped up the FLOSS Usability
Sprint last Sunday, and I'm just about recovered. It was a
wonderful, wonderful event: thought-provoking, inspiring, and most
importantly, productive. The key, as always, was having a great group
of participants, great facilitation (thanks to my partners in this
endeavour, AllenGunn and KatrinVerclas), and a
great space (thanks to JeffShults,
environmental and listening master). Also, many thanks to our
sponsors, without whom
this event would not have been possible. (ICD)
We accomplished many things. First and foremost, we helped improve
the usability of the six projects that participated:
AMP, Chandler, CivicSpace, FotoNotes, IdentityCommons, and OpenACS. So
far, the follow-through with this event has been significantly better than
that of previous events with which I've been involved, and we'll be
able to point to some very concrete achievements that are a direct
result of the sprint. (ICE)
Second, we explored several broader issues surrounding usability and
OpenSource software. It was an unbelievable learning experience for
everyone involved. Those of you who have heard my BlueOxen spiel know
that my ultimate goal is to foster a LearningCommunity around
collaboration. My claim is that these collaborative learning
processes are many times more effective and accelerated than
traditional learning methods. They are also better suited for
continuous learning. Our participants got a first-hand taste of this
phenomenon this past weekend. (ICF)
Third, we laid the groundwork for what I hope will be a burgeoning
community devoted to improving the usability of OpenSource software.
This will not be a quick process, and it will depend on brilliant,
passionate, good people. We were fortunate to have
forty of them at
our event, and I'm already looking forward to reconnecting with all of
them. (ICG)
I'm in the process of writing up a final report about the weekend's
accomplishments, but if you're interested in seeing the unpolished
artifacts of the event itself, check out the
sprint Wiki and the
photo gallery. I'll also be
speaking about the event at next
month's BayCHI (March 8 in PaloAlto), and I hope to see many of you
there. (ICH)
/events |
Posted at 5:22pm
