Setting up conversation groups for C:ADM
Written By: Ranulph Glanville on July 7, 2010
2 Comments
We would like your suggestions on how the groups we will break into at C:ADM should be arranged. The following questions occur to us. Yyou may have more.
1) What size should groups be?
2) Should groups remain fixed (in terms of the people in them, or should they change members? If so, how often?
3) How should group membership be determined, in the first place?
4) How should moderators be chosen?
5) How should rapporteurs (who report back on the conversations in the plenary sessions) be chosen?
6) Should groups be homogenous or from mixed background?
This topic will remain open until midnight, Pacific Time, 12 July. (This is also the deadline by which to tell us if you wish to make a presentation.)
Thank you for your involvement,
Ranulph
To give some background on the format of C:ADM2010, we have posted a short text by Nagib Callaos on conversational conferences here. Callaos uses conversational sessions in his WMSCI conferences, basing them largely on Bela Banathy’s Fuschl Conversations, themselves a development of the workshop conferences on Self Reference that Annetta Pedretti organised in the late 1970s. And onwards, backwards. We think the text may be of interest and help to our conferees. Many thanks to Nagib.
Some suggestions following the list of questions:
1) min 5 – up to max 10 people
2) Would be better to have fixed groups, but we have to give participants right to decide individually if they want to move to different group
3) I see two ways: 1st is according to major conference themes – 2 or more groups but each works on 1 theme; 2nd – this idea was very popular in cybernetic art – random!
4) I would assign 1 coordinator per group (authority) and give a chance to participants who will to moderate, say half a day.
5) Coordinator and moderators of the day offer content leader(s) of the group to report. Otherwise moderator is the ideal reporter.
6) If we take a conference orientation towards interdisciplinarity as a criteria, than answer is – mixed background is better for groups. Everything else is on moderators…