What happens if nobody comes forward to announce issues? I have always had
faith that this will never occur - and that is what I tell clients when they
ask this question. But in the last OS with 240 people this was about to happen.
It took several minutes to get 3 issues on the bulletin board. We had already
told them that they couldnt leave the conference complaining that their issue
didn't come up, there was only one person to blame etc. The group was extremely
shy and people didn´t want to speak in public. Specially not in a microphone.
And they didn´t want to step into the circle. We had to meet them with the
microphone, or read the issues for them. At last we had 22 issues on the wall.
But it took a long time.
My question is: would it be a good thing to break the group into pairs or
smaller group to talk for a few minutes about topics? Just to break the ice. Or
perhaps a preconference discussion on the network? The problem is that you
don't know before the conference how they will react. I have seen many
conferences where the people just throw themselves into the process.
Ingrid
