Dear Diane and others working with the convergence. I'll give you my thoughts about what you wrote Question: (1- When you put topics in rows, would it quicken the voting process if topics were placed in the numerical order ) Answer: I don't put numbers on them. (4. Ingrid, when you announced the topics of the cluster: what if a cluster did not get top votes. Do you still invite people to action plan on it or are you focussing at this point only on the top priorities ? Are priorities set by counting the total number of votes each cluster now has? Or is the action planning focussed not on the cluster title necessarily because that may be very general but on the specific issue that received the most votes? Conversely, if an issue received many votes but cannot be clustered with other topics, I understand that it goes for action planning as one of the priorities. What if a cluster has 3 top priority issues according to dot votes. Would you not want to create 3 distinct action planning groups unless topics can fall under the same plan?) Answer: Yes I invite them to action plan on everything they want to. Even though they have just a few dots on them. Iissues that are special (that will not be joined to others) might be as good as any other issue. I encourage the initiatior to pursue the project even though they are just 3-4 people, or if s/he is alone. About too big clusters with top voting. I discourage to cluster too much. It is better to have more groups working on the issues. (6.What I particularly liked is that they sign up with a "2" for their second choice. It gives notice to others that bumblebees may come later.) Answer: It also makes it easier after the conferenence when they will work on the project.
Ingrid