This brought a sigh of relief yes yes yes. I’ve even been on a couple of panels and it didn’t feel great—like you say there’s so little time you search for a pithy soundbite or ‘meaningful’ sounding comment, and feel obliged not to disagree with the person before you....
And NGOs absolute love a group brainstorm or “discussion” after gathering different stakeholders. A common mechanism is to split people into groups, everyone writes things down and then each group painstakingly shares their ideas. NGOs like this because it takes hours and feels “collaborative” even though its 95% useless for all the great reasons you list above. The biggest one for me is context—most people know very little about the topic itself, so those few who do spend most of the time explaining or correcting them.
This brought a sigh of relief yes yes yes. I’ve even been on a couple of panels and it didn’t feel great—like you say there’s so little time you search for a pithy soundbite or ‘meaningful’ sounding comment, and feel obliged not to disagree with the person before you....
And NGOs absolute love a group brainstorm or “discussion” after gathering different stakeholders. A common mechanism is to split people into groups, everyone writes things down and then each group painstakingly shares their ideas. NGOs like this because it takes hours and feels “collaborative” even though its 95% useless for all the great reasons you list above. The biggest one for me is context—most people know very little about the topic itself, so those few who do spend most of the time explaining or correcting them.
Thanks for this, important that its said.