Slowness

Matt Jones found this little nugget in the Feburary 2003 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

The Minority Slowness Effect: Subtle Inhibitions in the Expression of Views Not Shared by Others
Five studies revealed that people who hold the minority opinion express that opinion less quickly than people who hold the majority opinion. The difference in speed in the expression of the minority and majority opinions grew as the difference in the size of the minority and majority grew. Also, those with the minority view were particularly slow when they assumed the majority to be large, whereas the opposite was true for those with the majority view. The minority slowness effect was not found to be linked to attitude strength, nor was it influenced by anticipated public disclosure of the attitude.

via David Smith

Improv Arvo update

I've now set up an Eventbrite page for the Improv Arvo on Saturday November 1st 3pm-6pm - so go there to register.

As we say, no agenda or objective apart from having some fun and playing games - just a chance to stretch our co-creative limbs.

And thanks to Julian Burton for providing his studio as a venue.

Open Space and Action

Chris Corrigan has a very useful post on action planning in open space. He offers a free pdf describing three different approaches to helping steer people from lively discussion to practical action.

It's horses for courses of course. But I'm temperamentally quite inclined to Chris' approach which feels the more minimal tweak to the established open space pattern. Here's part of his reasoning:

Moving from OST to voting feels to participants like we are going from something amazing to "business as usual." Not always a bad thing, but my experience says that once people taste OST they want more of it. Creating categories of action based on proceedings from the previous day (the traditional convergence process) limits the patterns that might emerge as people step up to take leadership. Also it often happens that things become so converged that there is no real target for responsibility. It seems like there is often a group or two which everyone agrees is important but not important enough to champion.

I've written before about some of the pitfalls of the apparently reasonable invitation to move from talk to action. I think it's tempting to cajole people into "agreeing" lists of actions in a meeting in order to satisfy the impatience for results: but often these commitments feel empty and lacking real conviction.

I'll go a step further and question the picture of Open Space and other group processes in which there is one collective movement through divergence and convergence to settled action and consensus.

That may happen and it may not. And whatever appears to be happening overall, never lose sight of all the many smaller scale openings and closings going on for people. We should be willing to embrace a meeting appearing to end in confusion if that's how it goes; the loops that are left open may well be better closed in another place at another time.

Some of the most thrilling Open Spaces - for me - have been ones which end with participants seeming a little befuddled. They say things like "That was great... I'm not quite sure what happened but somehow it feels important." Maybe what happened is that their minds were opened to the richness and complexity of what was discussed; maybe there's no need for folks to start instant action - but perhaps the seeds have been sown for the next steps to happen later.

I find that that possibility may not sound like much of a "deliverable" at the outset, but is actually really satisfying when you get there. A gourmet meal compared to a McActionList.

Driving Identity

I've been having a few conversations recently with Adriana. She's been doing a lot of heavy conceptual thinking about where the web is taking us. It's hard to keep up sometimes but it feels pretty important. This post is probably not an accurate guide to her ideas, more an effort on my part to make my own sense of them.

Some of her most interesting thinking is on the subject of identity, where she argues, very provocatively, that our notions are rooted in an old, hierarchical mindset. To the point where we haven't noticed the assumptions we've been making.

To set the context for this, it's worth looking at her post celebrating the work of Whit Diffie in inventing public-key cryptography. Adriana sums up his breakthrough idea

The issue of privacy, boiled down for Whit Diffie to: How do you deal with a trustworthy person in the midst of a world full of untrustworthy people?

Diffie also believed in what he called “a decentralised view of authority”. By creating the proper cryptographic tools, he felt, you could solve the problem - by transferring the data protection from a disinterested third party to the actual user, the one whose privacy was actually at risk.

So instead of relying on a central authority to protect our data, we can do it peer-to-peer - a manner much more aligned with our innate human instincts.

So let's stretch that idea to how we establish our identity online. We tend to default to third-party endorsement: driving licence, credit card, passport etc. Adriana argues that this is a very hierarchical approach, whereas the internet is designed as a heterarchy. In a heterarchy, strength comes from diversity, so ideally we don't want to rely on cumbersome - and often flawed - central bureaucracies.

Over coffee, Adriana talked about us being able to drive our own identity, a phrase which resonates strongly with me. Most existing web spaces force us to squeeze our identity into someone else's boxes, using up our time filling and refilling standard questions and conforming to someone else's crude categories. (Think about what the idea of "friend" means in a Facebook world).

What if we didn't have to do that? That's such a big leap of imagination that it makes my brain hurt. But it could be the same kind of breakthrough that we saw in cryptography, writ large.

If you're interested in this, you could catch Adriana and a whole bunch of other smart folks tomorrow in London in a special extension of the Social Media Cafe.

What's wrong with a kiss?

David Wilcox has a good post reflecting on the mixed consequences of the RSA implementing its own social network. I like what he says about the merits of being upfront about failure rather the gilding the lily.

It's great that the RSA are working hard to reinvent themselves for the 21st Century and I hope they take on board some of what David suggests for the future.

I was interested in this nugget

Answering the question “Why can’t I start a discussion without starting a project?” It explains that the system is dedicated to project development, and says … “You can only start a discussion by connecting it to a project. This way the site will remain action focused.

I'm pretty uncomfortable with this notion that action is something separate from discussion; it smacks of impatience and I'm not sure it creates the kind of space where good ideas can be allowed to evolve at their own pace. More haste, less speed.

Or as John Cleese suggests around 3 mins into this Not-Work-Safe clip, no need to stampede...

Ning and Open Space

Carman Pirie has an interesting post about how he used ning to support a real world Open Space event. Like Carman, I'm concerned not to let recording of conversations become an impediment to participants, so I really liked his ideas for keeping it streamlined, whilst offering hosts the chance to record mini videos to the site.

The ning site Carman used is private, but it sounds like it has added a lot to the event - and very much in keeping with allowing each participant to take responsibility and contribute.

Chris Corrigan likes it too!

Improv Arvo

Mark Earls and are going to host an Improv Arvo on Saturday November 1st 3pm-6pm, in London SE1.

Just an afternoon for friends and anyone else interested to get together. As Mark says

No agenda or objective apart from having some fun and playing games - just a chance to stretch our co-creative limbs

Update: We've got a venue for free, and here's the eventbrite page for registration.

Great people or great challenges?

I loved this quote, tweeted by Leigh Carter via Ben Watson

There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet. – William Halsey

It saddens and frustrates me that some of those ordinary people spend the rest of their lives trying to bolster the notion of heroism as inherent in their identity. I imagine you can all think of a few examples.