FIRST, the second

The first day of actual tournament play at the GTA FIRST Regional is done, and it was just incredible. I could go on about the kids and their gracious professionalism, which is under documented, but I'll instead focus on a very small portion of the behind the scenes adult collaboration.

My role there is as a judge. There are nearly 20 of us. Each of the rest is my senior and infinitely more wise and accredited. They are all keen to mentor and very welcoming though, so it was a very positive learning experience for me. We have to interview teams and assign awards for such things as gracious professionalism, entrepreneurial activity, and efforts/successes in advancing the FIRST values and the profile of the engineering profession with youth. Not only is this all somewhat subjective, but there are many more complexities.

Among the complexities is the fact that every judge cohort interviews only a fraction of the teams before presenting their suggestions for winners to the rest. It's easy to fall in love with the teams and feel a bias for the team that you brought forth, as their fate is in your hands. Despite this and other confidential matters, the selection process for the day 1 awards went very well. This is in large part due to moderation and good intentions.

The judge advisor is University of Waterloo's Rob Gorbet. One would expect that he's an engaging presenter, but he is also a masterful facilitator. He exceeds every judge in terms of knowledge of the teams, but manages to reserve his input and not lead the group. He is great at asking questions to clarify and ensure that we are following the purpose and criteria appropriately. A good moderator is a marvelous addition to a meeting.

The "good intentions" come from the judges and everyone at FIRST. While we can feel an inclination to act in the interests of the teams we nominated, we ultimately all want what's best for the kids, and the deserving winner is what's best. Coming to consensus in this group was never a compromise, but rather was a truly collaborative process. Some good debate and our complete commitment to making the right decision, but nothing uncomfortable for anyone.

Why can decision making be so difficult in other situations? These were not simple decisions we were making. Could it be that less pure intentions and objectives influence the quality of the process by their impact on motives?

FIRST, the first

Today at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, the 66 teams of the FIRST Robotics Greater Toronto Regional Competition arrived and began fine-tuning their robots, and running practice rounds. The collaborative culture and environment that FIRST has been working for years to nurture and grow is an incredible thing to experience.

All of the teams are getting their robots ready in "the pits". There's a lot of activity -tightening of bolts, re-engineering of widgets, and robotics jargon that is well over my head ("bolts" and "widgets" were the most technical sounding things I could think to write). Despite each team feeling the crunch, gracious professionalism was still a top priority for teams. The only announcements made over the PA system in the pits was when teams were shy on components or needed help with something. It would be announced, and other teams would come running at the expense of their own limited time to donate their materials and expertise.

At the Judge's Dinner this evening, I was honored to be among some very accomplished engineers from industry, government and academia. Of all the technicalities of the program and intricacies of the scoring, we actually spent most of the night reviewing the culture of FIRST, and discussing how we would behave to maintain and grow the culture. An incredible experience.

Watch a live broadcast of the competition through the Discovery Channel webcast here on Friday the 28th and Saturday the 29th. Although, I feel Discovery's plug to watch "robots at war" is grossly inaccurate. Robots are at game, the important component - the kids - are at something much greater than game or war.

Life on MaRS

The nature of clusters and their impact on innovation is well documented. Proximity of minds and resources breeding collaboration and all that good stuff. A living microcosm of the concept is providing convincing testament everyday at MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. Under one very architecturally impressive roof, MaRS houses a business incubator with fledgling companies (mostly biomed and tech), venture capital firms, and other organizations and resources to nurture the growth of its organizations. (How's that "its" reverend?)

A key part of MaRS is the Collaboration Centre. It's got all of the A/V bells and whistles, but it's the whole notion of the Centre that's most noteworthy. The fact that the minds that got together to create this meca of entrepreneurialism deemed that a well outfitted place for people to meet at the expense of extremely valuable real estate was a necessity is an encouraging thought.

In addition to running a traditional venue/hospitality business, as a part of their mandate, the folks at the Collaboration Centre host events driven by the purpose to create opportunities for their tenants. Networking, education, and other such opportunities. So not only do they use this space as a revenue generator, but they orchestrate gatherings to leverage the power of collaboration to the benefit of MaRS' greater purpose.

How seriously do you consider collaboration opportunities as a part of your business or personal development plans?

The Death of the Lecture

With innumerable different approaches to learning and instruction like gaming, virtual worlds, informal learning, podcasts, and more collaborative user-generated on-demand content sources, what will become of the traditional lecture?


Erik Mazur is a leading edge professor from Harvard. He strikes me as anti-lecture, and is doing some fascinating research into alternatives for use in university classrooms. Check out some of the options he's researching here.

I've got to be somewhat sensitive, as I call a good many lecture-heavy professors clients, but I'll at least submit that the lecture is not well suited to every learner type. Where does the urge to have an expert dictate come from, and will it live on in the coming decades?

Check back soon for "The Death of the Case Study", as my affront on "higher" education system continues.

UnSure of the UnConference

BarCamps, UnConferences and the like are all the rage these days. There is an undeniable appeal to the authenticity and freedom of the format. I would challenge some of the fundamental claims people make about them though.

UnConferences are allegedly unbiased in their invitations. So you get a blogger or otherwise networked person posting a public invitation to join a group at some pub or another, and discuss a given topic. The bias here is obvious. The people that will be exposed to and respond to such an invitation are the people that are already followers of the blog, or already within the network of the unofficial host. If diversity is one of the core principles of achieving a wise crowd, then wouldn't this limited inclusiveness create the equivalent of a shallow conferencing gene pool? Not that a person becomes a zealot or disciple by merit of reading another's blog, but there is some influence inherent, and an indication of shared interests at least.

Depending on the purpose of the meeting, I think an unconference can be totally appropriate. Especially if it's as a catalyst for relationships. If a definite plan needs to be created, then perhaps not. What are the most appropriate purposes for an UnConference in your opinion or experience? When is it not a suitable format?

The Moderator's Dilemma

If you're hired on to moderate a discussion, then you are hired on to moderate a discussion. I'd imagine it's the same for most facilitators and consultants. The authority that decides to hold the meeting arranges for me to be there, and ultimately signs my paycheck.

There is potential for a very difficult situation here. A good moderator is seeking the input of everyone in the room. A good moderator is mitigating the damaging behaviours in the room. What if that damaging behaviour is coming from that authority; CEO, Manager, or whatever? The task of moderating in this circumstance becomes considerably more delicate and challenging.

Part of my mandate (and philosophy) is to pursue the collective intelligence of a group. If a manager has a predetermined solution or outcome that she/he wishes the group to get to in a scripted meeting, then I would explicitly say that they should find somebody else to facilitate the process. But whether or not this leader is fixated on bringing everyone on board with a farce of a meeting, and no matter how enlightened and altruistic they are, they do have an opinion. As a moderator; limiting pontificators, grenade-throwers, and other counterproductive personas, trying not to show preference to the authority is a difficult predicament.

They are usually expert at what they do, but that's not the problem. The problem is that if you question or moderate this person, you're jeapordizing the relationship that is ultimately paying you for your efforts. I try and inform these people that they are equally as subject to moderation before the meeting, but I can't help but feel some bias.

For the love of god, somebody please comment. I believe that the moderator/facilitator role is to act in the interest of outcomes, but what is the best way to do this without upsetting the authority in the room? Not every leader is the ideal change agent.

Mechanism Design

This year's Nobel Prize went to a few guys that developed the economic theory of mechanism design. The principle deals with the challenge of "asymmetric information", which is what happens when the different parties in a situation have different information and levels of understanding. For instance, if I am selling you diamonds, you would be willing to pay more than the reasonable profit margins I as the dealer am willing to selling them for because you think diamonds are rare. I know they are not. Information asymmetry. Outcome that is not optimal for both parties. The Economist has a good story about the theory here.

I don't want to get into the mathematics, which coincidentally, I don't understand anyway. My interest lies in the translation to the economy that is the meeting room. It is very common that there are experts in a meeting that make for asymmetric information in a meeting. Many people feel that they are therefore entitled to the majority of the speaking time, and the greatest influence over decisions. Mechanism design, with it's intent to create the most effective outcome for all parties, may be a better alternative.

Trying to distribute information as much as possible is one approach to alleviating the asymmetry. Most important in this approach is absolute honesty. If an individual with a monopoly on knowledge in a certain area wishes to lead a meeting in a certain direction, then they may be less inclined to be totally transparent and disseminate all of their knowledge. Escpecially if their unique knowledge is something they are ashamed of.

How might a meeting designer or moderator incentivize people to park their own interests for the benefit of an optimal "mechanism designed" outcome?

Flocks and Schools of Robots? Meeting Attendees?

Despite some techy subject matter in recent posts that may contradict this: this is not a blog about robots. But they are helping us learn more about collaborative efforts, so here's just a bit more...

Great reading today in the Science pages of The New York Times, see here. Most of us have seen, and all of us have seen footage of, a flock of birds moving in an unfathomably coordinated pattern. Or schools of fish flashing their scales in a coordinated sequence more impressive than the best LED light shows there are going.

There has been a longstanding assumption that there is some mystical coordination instinct or phenomenon that enables this. However, new evidence suggests that it is actually the reactions to predators or other forces of individuals within the groups that subtly trigger a similar and coordinated response from the rest. The evidence comes from simulating these organisms with robots. If animals seem to move as one, but they more accurately move because of one, are any other assumptions challenged?

There are a few interesting metaphors here. In a meeting, one person can change the course of meeting very visibly. On the positive side, they may make an inspiring presentation, or surface an important but difficult question that everyone wanted surfaced. The negative equivalent might be someone dominating the conversation and shooting down other's ideas. But there are definitely instances of meetings shifting focus, direction, or even principle due to the hidden actions and influences of one individual.

This ability to so impact a group's behaviour and meeting's outcomes is a great power to wield. There is potential for great destruction, or great yet humble advancing of the purpose. While the damaging persona may be the person politicking, the silent leader may just be asking provocative questions and empowering people with confidence.

Have you witnessed either? What practical tactics might one apply to be the humble, behind the scenes leader of the flock, school, or meeting?

The Singularity is Really Near Now

Big, somewhat terrifying news today from clairvoyant author of The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil. Read the post here. I guess there's a quorum of supra-geniuses out there that are developing these nifty little robots (symbiotic evolutionary robot organisms to the layperson) that can interact with each other to behave as swarms. Kinda like a bunch of cells working together to form a single organism.

The bite size robots communicate (by magic, I think) and share resources amongst themselves to represent the best interests of the whole, which is essentially one entity.

What are we going to take from this? There's the Kurzweil inevitability that our selves (souls? minds?) will enter this unified machine and be a part of the one shared life... and immortal to boot. In the meantime, we can hopefully get our hands on some of this technology/magic to improve the way we communicate in flesh form. Maybe a feed to the robots to express to them our candid needs, and they could feed this to the most appropriate interlocutor on the grid. For example, if I dictate to my robot that I would like a beer, then the symbiot robot web would inform a neighbouring bartender that the handsome blonde guy at the end of the bar needs a beer.

Where are all of my commentors? Where would you see this technology taking us in the near future in terms of communications and collaboration?

Brain Waves

There is an interesting article in today's Globe and Mail about advertising juggernaut (they would probably say "media research firm") Nielsen investing in NeuroFocus; a company that specializes in monitoring neurophysiological patterns and phenomena. This is an alternative to focus groups, surveys, and other antiquated methods and metrics that can help organizations gauge emotional response and engagement.

The space organizations like NeuroFocus (and there are others) occupy is primarily for advertising and product development purposes. While this makes indisputable sense, I think it's a narrow view of what we can do with people's brainwaves.

What about meetings? I wax prophetic about the value of audience response nearly every day. But my expertise in that arena would become obsolete as quickly as your brain can transmit signal to your mouth to make you say "unemployable" if the cool little keypads were replaced with non-invasive brain imaging devices, or cool helmets that monitor engagement, emotional response, and other physiologically immaculate indications.

There are obviously challenges to what is a step towards reading minds in a meeting. I would definitely be skeptical of what's being monitored and who would know what about my thoughts and perceptions. Skepticism could be tremendously damaging to the sense of (damn, this soft word again) trust in a meeting. And perhaps there is such a thing as too much truth. I firmly believe that if there are issues that exist in the minds of meeting attendees, then they need to be surfaced, addressed, and discussed. But even as this happens I can mask my irrational disdain for others, that if surfaced, wouldn't help anyone.

I would love to one day be a part of the strategic alignment meeting where the CEO presents the plan, and turns to the screen to see a perfectly clear picture of whether people buy into the plan, and if they think it's feasible. It might not be soon, but we've got to start thinking about neurophysiological science's implications in collaborative efforts. After all, a big reason why physical meetings still exist is that our brains react differently when there is a human being in front of us that our various senses can perceive. We actually stimulate and fire different synapses in our brain than is possible without that sensory engagement.

For now I'm kind of glad. The information - from the smell sense in particular - that would engage those synapses and the resulting opinion if you were experiencing me say this in person today instead of reading it would sabotage the message. That's correct, I was at a St. Patrick's Day party at Steamwhistle brewery last night. The availability of beer would have registered a powerful emotional response with the NeuroFocus technology.

All Work and No Play

The week is over. This doesn't often mean much to me. I don't treat weeknights much different from Friday and Saturday. I like to go in to work on the weekends.

But this week is different. I get enthused often at work. Little breakthroughs do wonders for my esteem and motivation. I've found myself less easy to motivate this week. The implications are enormous. What will I do to get my motivation back? I'm working on a lot of important things right now... or should be.

How "manageable" or available to influence is motivation? My secret weapon is usually unrivaled discipline. When that fails, I'm in trouble. In meetings, we rely on external forces - like an engaging meeting - to precipitate motivation. I'd like some ideas on how we can work on it internally.

This is for a friend who said that my initial posts had too much of my work persona, and not enough genuine passion and personality. It's a bit of a cop-out, but this is me being personal, only to share that the passion doesn't express in written word because it's temporarily absent.

Complexity in Meetings

For a few years now I've been on a list-serve (value networks) with Knowledge Management guru Dave Snowden. I consider him something of a virtual mentor. He recently blogged about one of his better takes on complexity theory on what is one of my favourite blogs.


The video is available here, and please note the following conditions:


The video was created by Candice Mulkey, Melissa Lieurance, and Kenneth Paulino to support teaching activities at the US Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Homeland Defense and Security. We request the video be used within the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license framework.

It takes a few seconds to download, a few minutes to watch, and the pacing is treacherously slow for someone of my limited patience and attention. Still, I strongly endorse taking the time to watch and appreciate this.

So, without getting too much into a definition of complexity theory that I may well screw up, it's basically the notion that organic systems, including groups of people, can't be mechanically engineered. This means that a rigid expectation of how people will behave is unreasonable and damaging. Rather than try and dictate how people will behave, it makes sense to create conditions that will nurture positive activity.

In the video, the subject matter is a children's party. The way children act and react to plans is unpredictable. The metaphor is an organizational one. Creating rigid expectations and parameters for the way people will interact and work by creating and trying to enforce a "desired state" is no less absurd than marching kids through a set of prescribed agenda items, complete with process checks and metrics.

I'm also intrigued by this complexity acknowledging approach on a meetings specific level. I think people appreciate agendas and structure, but are we over-structuring and forcing a living system into an engineered frameworks? Can we better capitalize on a collective and provide a better experience for them by providing options and tools, instead of structure and format? Where is the breaking point? Do you need a critical mass of leadership mentalities for this approach?

I'll commit here to doing some experimentation along these lines, and will of course report back. In the meantime, one good model I can think of for the latter kind of party (in the video) is Elliot Masie's annual Learning conferences.

The Full Spectrum... dammit

In their book Collaboration 2.0, Stewart Levine and David Coleman say something to the effect of there being 3 parts to the collaboration spectrum on this "inter-web" business. They are as follows:

1. Technology
2. People
3. Process

I maintain that it's the same in any given meeting or group driven project. Sometimes the technology is very simple (pens and paper vs. "inter-web"), but the right tool for the right job is an important part of collaboration. My mindshare is often dominated by the technology and process side of things. I think both can be applied to have beneficial effects on the psychology of a group, and clearly all overlap, but the "People" part is the area I need to be conscious of paying closer attention to.

So, as with most things, I'd like to take an experimental approach to improving how I interact with others. When I think of people, I think of the most important one first... me. How am I going to prepare myself or create the necessary conditions that will allow me to be most effective in a group setting?

It's kind of cause-and-effect, and a bit like putting out fires; but psychologists have a tool that I'd like to introduce in a work setting that could help to mitigate damaging behaviour by creating self awareness. Self awareness around "triggers" specifically. A trigger could be anything that sets in motion a pattern reaction. We see people reacting to their triggers constantly. A trigger for me might be to get angry or make fun of someone I perceive to be behaving unreasonably. To find out why people respond to triggers as they do is important to form an awareness around, but you'll have to turn to a more specialized source for that.

For my purposes, I want to know what my pattern unproductive behaviours are, and how they express in a group setting. So a team of colleagues and I are going to try and park our egos, make ourselves temporarily vulnerable (ugh), and flesh out a list of our independent triggers. This is quite the experiment. I will have to approach the engagement with humility, and share my known flaws. I'll also have to be prepared to listen to what my colleagues consider as my negative behaviour (I always thought my shouting profanities was endearing!). I will of course be offering them observations as well.

The outcome will be a list of our triggers and pattern behaviours, along with notes on how we should alternatively behave (which may even be disengaging) to avoid causing damage. Lastly, we will also list how we would prefer to be notified and receive feedback for each instance in real-time. Our team will be accountable for making progress in these areas and helping each other make progress. I'm excited to see if the acknowledgement and awareness will have an impact.

Of course, the proper environment for this meeting is critical. "Trust" is a word that I don't use often, and is about as soft as it gets in my eyes. But without trust, this excercise would be redundant. A closely knit team has all made one another confident in our intentions and desire to improve our interactions, so I'm comforted that proceedings will be civil. But as mentioned, this People component of the collaboration spectrum is a tricky one.

I look forward to reporting back on this experiment's progress.

Survey Says...

Using an Audience Response System (ARS) in a meeting can augment and shape discussion, and be a powerful tool. It can also be easy trivialized, and a waste of time. Many of the individuals I design meetings with are familiar with and have used ARS, but only a small portion of those have seen value in it.

The most notable reasons I see for integrating ARS into a group engagement are to leverage the anonymity and surface what a group is really thinking, so the meeting focus shifts from the bullshit that leadership wants to shove down everyone's throat to the real issues that the group has illuminated as what needs to be addressed. In terms of learning and development, it's also handy to gauge understanding from time to time. Again, you're illuminating areas where the group is confident and need dwell no longer, or where they need to spend a little more time and need more depth than what was planned in the agenda. Both of these purposes require a fluid meeting format, that not many are comfortable with.

Used well, ARS's don't just get feedback on how the meeting was. They shape the very course of the meeting. This is an uneasy notion for the rigid manager that wants to script proceeding, outcomes, and know exactly what to expect from a meeting. There's also a lot of resistance from anyone who fears embarrassment or, god forbid, disalignment from polling. This is difficult to understand. Why would candor be a threat? The group has an opinion. You can choose to ignore that as you try to establish a new universal outlook, or you can acknowledge it and explore what may need to be altered to improve or build upon that state.

Comments on how you feel about ARS are strongly encouraged. This is one of those topics you can expect me to post a lot about in the coming weeks. I'll drill down on why a negative view of ARS may exist, and share some strategies for effective ARS implementation.

In the Presence of Greatness

There's something profoundly humbling about standing in a room full of several hundered or several thousand teenagers that are all smarter than you are. It's amplified when they're WAY smarter than you, as is my situation when I find myself at FIRST Robotics events (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). The accompanying picture is of the 2007 Chairman's Award Winners, pictured with - among others - FIRST Creator Dean Kamen, Chairman John Abele, and a politician that should feel very humbled indeed.


What's the relevance to this blog? Well, clearly we have teams of kids working together, but it's bigger than that. There are no limits to what I could learn from these kids about science, technology, math, etc, etc, etc. But it's the superior approach to collaboration that the game's rules and kids' nature that astonishes me the most. The most successful teams don't only build robots that would put Number 5 to shame, but they also are the most effective collaborators. And not in the typical, overhyped and overdefined corporate way of effective teamwork, or strategic alliance with complimentors. The successful FIRST teams have come to realize that collaborating with competitors is equally as important.

As with the marketplace, and the world, FIRST is not a zero-sum game. Scoring and rules as with ubiquitous incentives in many aspects of life favour "coopetition" over competition. The greatest honour in FIRST, the Chairman's Award, is not given to the winner of the competition necessarily either. Rather, the grand prize is reserved for the team that has displayed the FIRST values most thoroughly and effectively. The core value has got to be "Gracious Professionalism", which has a few interpretations. The best description I've heard of Gracious Professionalism is:

"Behave like your grandmother is always watching you, and you are competing with her other grandchildren."

I'll be judging at the largest regional FIRST competition in the world at The Hershey Center in Mississauga from March 27-29. If you can make it, do make it, and prepare to be inspired.

The Monolithic Beginning

It seems counterintuitive to have a one-to-many vehicle like a blog for something like the art/science of people working together. Not that it hasn't been done before. So, if ever I get any readers, I'll rely on you to enrich this experiment with comments. Regardless, I'll just be posting a few lessons I've learned. More accurately, I'll be posting some things I've observed, and thoughts about the implications.

Getting started then; I'm a big believer in using decision support (DS) technology for the purposes of idea generation. There are innumerable solutions out there. I'm most familiar with the GroupSystems platforms, which are good for bringing efficiency to a meeting, as well as setting the psychological stage. By offering anonymity to the delegates through DS, delegates are given the sense that their opinion is valued, as in this arena it carries the same weight as everyone else's, and idea generation can't be dominated by the greatest authority or most aggressive person in the room.

Lot's more on the why's and how's of DS to come. For now though, check out what shows some promise as an effective open-source DS solution. Kluster is still beta at this point, but it's easy to gather how it works. Not unlike the process prescribed by other platforms, but it can be public, and they've created a sexy ecosystem complete with cool names for functions, and in-world currency. This currency (called watts) makes kluster a little bit more of a prediction market than a standard rating system for ideas. We'll watch this with great interest. They're set to debut at the upcoming TED meeting.