You can only indoctrinate, or whatever.
Exactly. Now, it’s just 15 or 20 per class. It’s much easier.
Same here.
That’s what my disclaimer means. I’m acting always in an individual’s capacity. I really like listening to people. That’s my main work, actually. I’m being paid by taxpayers to listen to people.
And answer them, but that’s just to get them talk more.
Exactly right. No, but seriously, I do think a lot of political issues, you mentioned there’s no shortcut. The shortest path often is just to get everyone listening to everyone else. That’s the shortest already. It’s just people keep doing other, more ceremonial things, ritualistic things to prevent the listening from happening.
At the end, still, you’ve got to listen to each other, and then find out something that people can live with. By saying my main job and my hobby is to listen, we cut away all those ribbons, rituals, and ceremonies, and get straight to the business. That’s my hobby.
I remember reading through all those child raising books my parents purchased when I was five or six. They were very into education, so they bought a lot of books on education, philosophy, practice, and so on.
I remember when I was five or so, I really resonated with one of the books. I forgot the name of the book. It’s a book on the technique of active listening. Basically, not just listen, but empathize, and to basically co-create a horizon, a way of thinking, a perspective as part of listening.
It stressed that listening is what’s happening, and we’re just vehicles for it. It’s a very non-individualistic view on the art of the listening. I remember finding it really intriguing, and something that I can practice. It’s like playing a piano.
It’s not something magical. It’s just something you do. That’s it, perhaps. I learned it from a book. It’s just how it is, yeah.
That’s right.
There’s an equalizing force.
Quite a few, actually. I am frequently invited to give talks to maybe 300 people, 500 people, 1,000 people. At that point, it’s impossible in our small wetware brain to track where every person is looking at, which emotional state they are.
The best facilitators can maybe do 50 people. Beyond that, it’s possible to keep track individually where everybody is at, and what everybody’s views about everybody is. It’s just combinational explosion.
I use a set of what we call ambient computing, or COM technology -- there is many words for this -- that basically says, "We’re using technology not to distract, but to do the real converse, to let us focus more."
For example, I will use their phones, because by far, when there is 500 people, at any time, 100 people of them are on their phones nowadays. It’s like a natural distractor. Whenever there is a large group meeting, people are just taking their phones out and checking their email for no apparent reason. It also influence people close to them.
Around them. You have those little pockets of people checking Twitter in the middle of a session. Those apps are designed by the best minds that reinforce those short term, instant gratification. There really is no point in trying to compete with the red, small numbers on their screens.
One technique I always use is to tell at the very beginning everyone to take out their phone, and connect to this website, slido.com, and just write down anything on their mind. Anything they want to ask me, anything they want to tell a joke, somebody would want to say to a group.
Because everybody is taking out their phone and doing that, I am essentially occupying their phone, so they are not doing anything else. They are basically using this as a way to communicate. Then I will bring out this projector, project the people’s voices on their phones to the large projector, and ask people to like anything that they want me to answer first.
Basically, this co-opted people’s reflex to press like. They would not to go to Facebook on their phones. They will just use this.
It is just a lot of psychological gimmicks.
Right, exactly. Then I gave this binding power to things like, people ask me a question. Maybe I’ll just throw in a few silly ones. It’s all anonymous. People feel it’s OK, and just give binding power.
If out of 500 people, 100 press like to a very silly question, I will highlight that question, and answer that. Basically, it’s me engaging with the crowd, but the crowd synthesized as, perhaps, one person. It’s conversation with the crowd.
It’s called Slido, S-L-I-D-O.
I think being anonymous is a key part of it. If it’s taking raising a hand, even in very liberal circles, like when around five people, everybody can raise their hands. If 500, it’s very difficult for people to, especially more introvert people, to raise their hands and ask a question, even if they have a lot to contribute.
In government settings, if there are superiors in the same room, it takes even more courage. If everybody is anonymous, and half of people are looking at their phones, you don’t really know who was the person who asked this question, or who raised this sentiment.
That really helps. Slido, or Pol.is, or Vmesh, or Join, all platforms, RealtimeBoard, all these platforms that I use to facilitate group listening, they have one common thing, is they don’t let participant reply to one another.
That just consumes people’s energy to more narrower and narrower conversations. In all those tech that I use, the only way to refute a argument, really, is to raise a better argument. There is no ad hominem attacks, or things like that. It takes some design.
OK. IMED.
You can send me the link, and I will check it out.
Yeah, I’ll look over it.
You can just airdrop that to me, actually.
That’s one piece of technology that always works.
Keynote is just fine.
You can airdrop that to me.
That’s a real innovation.
Exactly. It’s non-scarce. Any scarcity is artificial with information.
OK. You can airdrop me when ready, and I’m going to pay for the lunch. We need to slowly walk back.
OK, sure.
Hello.
Pretty good. Thank you.
That’s right. I’m in the airport lounge. I’m going to speak a little bit softer, assuming that you can still hear me of course.
To New Zealand, actually, to Auckland.
There’s this annual Foocamp there called the BAA Camp, or Kiwi Foo. I’m attending it for the first time.
Just for setting the time frame, I have two and a half hours. I don’t know whether that will be sufficient for you.
Sure, because there’s a lot of questions.
If you want to go through them all, I would estimate one hour of time would be.
Give or take.
Oh, wow.
