Not a summary of what was said, but more of some observations on process.
Lunch was incredibly full today - we had upwards of 30, filled one entire side of the restaurant plus a second table of four. And becuase I asked a question that allowed a long answer, it took a full hour to get through everyone, and some people left early.
In some sense that's OK, if you believe in the open space "law of two feet", and if you think that whoever shows up are the right people. I had a great time but the dynamic was odd enough that I want to try to get to a 100pm stop time again instead of 130pm. So here's some suggestions that came in from that.
1. Bring introductions down to the completely minimal. I've been in circles where the entire intro was full name plus three more words, nothing more, and the intros go around the table at something like two or three per minute. If you have to condense your identity into three words you have to think hard, or be funny.
2. Reach a larger audience in more smaller venues. Promote a set of places to meet at the same time, and let people pick which of many places they want to show up; synchronize and coordinate so that someone organizes at each location at the same time.
3. Use some kind of token - like boarding passes a la Southwest - to hand out to people so that you know how many people are there and which order you handed them out in. Use that both to plan how many seconds you have for each intro and to provide an order to things.
4. Get inspired by events like Ignite Ann Arbor and hold a rock paper scissors tournament to winnow out the crowd down to a reasonable size; only the last four or eight people standing get to say who they are, and they get more time to talk.
5. Don't let people introduce themselves; rather, the host introduces everyone.
6. Inspired by the Washington Post, host an exclusive event and charge a lot of money for access to "those powerful few".
7. Don't worry about it; it will work itself out somehow with something someone suggests on the spot.
