Joe O'Brien introduced me to this discussion format at the Columbus Ruby Brigade. He learned this in Chicago somewhere so neither of us are claiming that this is a new or original idea of ours. However, it's a brilliant alternative to a panel discussion or open spaces format discussion.

Here are the rules: 

1. 4-6 chairs depending on size of the crowd. We had 60 people, so we went with 6 chairs. If I had 25 people in the room, I'd probably go to 4.
2. To speak, you have to sitting at the table - i.e. no peanut gallery. If you have something to contribute - come sit at the table.
3. Anyone in the crowd can come up and sit down in the empty chair at any given point.
4. When that happens, someone else has to get up freeing up the last chair.

Honestly, it's that simple. The biggest issue is getting the first person to come sit down. The second big issue is riding herd on the crowd to make sure that nobody talks without sitting at the table.

Once we got those two things down, the discussion was fantastic. I'm really hoping to bring this format to a lot of the things that I'm doing.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007 3:23:23 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 
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