Streamline Introductions
The length of time spent on introductions is becoming overwhelming! Let's see if we can figure out a way of getting everyone acquainted while keeping this in a defined time-box (fifteen minutes?)
Poll Created Tue 20 Sep 2016 10:51PM
Ask people to do the "name, org, three words" intro, and demonstrate it. Closed Fri 23 Sep 2016 10:01PM
Looks like consensus on trying out "name + org + 3 words" for intros. Let's see how it goes.
I really like Derek's principle that we will always have everyone introduce themselves -- it's important for people to hear names, and it sets the mood right.
We can make it scale by giving people a framework for keeping their intro very short. Specifically, the "name, org, three words" practice (already used by some other event organizers).
You ask each person to say just their name, optionally one -- and only one -- organization they're affiliated with, and then exactly three words. A key to this is to explicitly tell people to not include the "Hi, my name is... and my organization is..." etc. Lose the filler. JUST say your name, org, and three words, and that's all.
Also key is to start the process out by demonstrating it clearly. For example, Christopher and Derek might demonstrate like this when they start the introductions:
"Christopher Whitaker, CivicWhitaker, community supports code"
"Derek Eder, DataMade.us, show don't tell"
I might say something like this:
"Karl Fogel, Open Tech Strategies, government open source"
etc, etc. I've seen rooms of hundreds of people fly through the intros, once everyone gets in the spirit of brevity and really sticks to the pattern.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 100.0% | 7 |
|
| Abstain | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 38 |
|
7 of 45 people have participated (15%)
Kevin Pujanauski
Tue 20 Sep 2016 10:55PM
Would be cool to have a space on Twitter or the Google Doc or something for people to share more, if they chose. #ChiHackNightIntros
Ben Wilhelm
Wed 21 Sep 2016 2:04PM
I like karl's name, org, three words proposal
Joel Inwood
Wed 21 Sep 2016 2:44PM
I like name + org + 3. I always feel weird in small groups, but maybe that's just me. Plus, if there's one person who's interested in something especially interesting to me, then I'd be bummed if they weren't in my small group. #Cobol4Life
Daniel F. Bassill Tue 20 Sep 2016 11:32PM
I would love to see everyone introduce themselves using Twitter or Facebook with #chihacknight tag. Could be done in 5 minutes with much greater depth of intro shared.
Andrew Rasmussen Tue 20 Sep 2016 11:43PM
I like the idea of cutting the ("I am ... I work at ...") fluff for lossless compression of introductory info, but I do like the brief snippets people give to describe themselves or respond to polls.
Andrew Rasmussen Tue 20 Sep 2016 11:44PM
I'll also note that online intros would be cool, but not everyone has easy access (by tech or by choice) to twitter/fb on their device.
Karl Fogel Wed 21 Sep 2016 12:53AM
Hey, Andrew. I also like those snippets and the poll responses (on nights when we're doing an on-the-fly poll), but there's a cost to having each person transmit that information. In the end it's a tradeoff: we can have all the shiny things, if we're okay with introductions taking a really long time :-), but then we're right back where we started.
I also think there's a connection between amount of core content and amount of inevitable fluff: humans can do fluffless transmission only when they are fitting it into a known structure, because then they know (even if only unconsciously) that their audience is prepared to receive the fluffless info stream. That's the real reason the name+org+3words thing works. Once we start getting random snippets in there, the fluff also creeps back in (and you can actually observe this happening on nights when there's a poll response).
Maybe we could play it by ear?
On nights when Hack Night is not crowded, Christopher and Derek can make the judgement call to have the looser intros. On nights when it is crowded, they could tighten up and do name+org+3words.
Ethan Heppner Wed 21 Sep 2016 4:05AM
Well, given the results of tonight's survey (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11lBdBoBK2JK7rXgozx_4BIUkzgEPIVCaGrg7ttXVU-c/edit#gid=1145989178), it seems like 63 people out of 101 didn't want to shorten the intros, vs. 26 who did. So, perhaps this is a call not to act on this issue? Nevertheless, I made a couple of other observations as well:
Roll-call voting has its disadvantages-- in this case, the fact that the first several people voted "no" (including the organizers) may have set the tone for the rest of the voting.
People voting "yes" were often people who came more regularly and led breakout groups. Which makes sense-- the intros can be tiresome when you have to hear them every time and would rather jump right into the presentation or your breakout group.
I think Karl's proposal would make intros significantly shorten intros and I'd be up for trying it. But I also wanted to put an alternative proposal on the table:
What if instead of introducing ourselves to the entire group, we split the audience into groups based on where they were sitting and had introductions happening simultaneously in each one? I see several advantages to this:
- Shortens intro time without making it feel rushed
- Scales well: if we had 200 people show up one night, instead of taking twice as long, we could simply divide the audience into more groups
- Introvert-friendly: as an introvert myself, I didn't feel comfortable introducing myself to a room full of people. Others may also feel more comfortable in a small group setting
- Aids with memory: it's really hard to remember names and faces in a crowd of 100. It's much easier in groups of 15-20.
- Useful for new people and regulars alike: new people still get to introduce themselves to a friendly audience, and regulars will see a different group each time.
We could maybe then do the big group intros with a question every month. I think it's important to be able to continue doing the survey questions as it allows us to get a snapshot of who our attendees are so we can make more informed decisions on Loomio when proposing changes to the event. And having the questions as part of the introduction gets a near-perfect response rate (whereas I might only get 20% at best from a Google form)
The only downside I see would be that doing this right would require setup-- maybe pre-arranging the chairs into circles (and putting them back afterwards). But if others want to try this idea and I can get some help, I'm happy to come in early at least a few nights per month to do what we need to do to make this happen.
Karl Fogel · Tue 20 Sep 2016 11:27PM
Good idea, Kevin. (Let's just make sure people understand that they can't make one of their three words be a long, complicated URL :-) .)