Tale of two workshops

Tale of two workshops

We provide a Whispering Service. This interprets complex information, fast conversation or jargon into clear summaries so no-one is excluded because they need a bit more time to think, have difficulty following fast talk or lack specialised language.

We tested it at Gov Camp Cymru to see if it works at an unconference. It does. Phew!

We had explained the concept of the Whispering Service from the front during the housekeeping talk. 

We split up, and we picked our workshops. We had had a long chat over pre-conference coffee with one of the workshop leaders, so he had some idea what was going on. The other knew little or nothing about our little experiment.

The one who knew was quick to catch on to how to keep group dynamics comfortable while including us all. Full marks to him for that. We probably need a nice long debrief some time to get the most out of the learning. 

The poor guy who wasn't let into the secret found things discomforting, if not downright disrespectful. If you've never seen it (and how many people have!), Whispered interpretation can look as if we are having our own conversation and ignoring the group - uncomfortable for a leader and disrespectful of the group.

Whispered interpretation can also involve the whisperer raising a hand then pointing the person for whom they are interpreting. That's because it can be hard for someone to spot and push their way into a conversation to get their voice heard. The 'hand up and point' method solves that. But we will admit it isn't something we've seen in mainstream discussions before, so we can see why it was uncomfortable or puzzling for others.

At the after party, we were talking about the Whispering service and the penny dropped for the workshop leader. Fair play to the guy for not chucking us out of his workshop for disrespect (or, in 'unconference' language, for not encouraging us to use the law of two feet as we seemed to be neither giving not receiving much of the time).
And fair play to him for giving is an after party debrief on how it had felt for him.

And definitely fair play to Gov Camp Cymru for creating a safe space where we could attempt this experiment without worrying about it having long term negative consequences. I think that's probably because we have done away with so many of the social norms around conferences (like a fixed programme, smart clothes and work titles on our badges) that it's easier to be relaxed about things that are unexpected or make us uncomfortable - because we come expecting to be surprised.  

The experience did raise a more general principle for any occasion when we meet people who are not like us in some way, or when we encounter behaviour we don't understand: COMMUNICATE. Ask, explain, don't apologise, don't demand. As soon as the workshop leader knew What we'd been doing it made sense and he was fine about it. Without us saying or him asking, he was left discomforted by our behaviour. Gentle communication got rid of that discomfort because it brought shared understanding.

So please, let's make one of our post Gov Camp Cymru actions to be bold and communicate gently, clearly and respectfully rather than stay quiet for fear of offending or because we just don't think.

We can't promise we won't secretly test something next year - so if you are there in 2016 and Barod make you feel uncomfortable, gently ask us what we are up to this year.

(oh, and to the people involved in discussions about 'guerilla testing', I guess that's what we did - but that would be a whole other blog)