This is such a real struggle, and it's part of the labor of organizing a group that some people don't even realize is there! This made me think of a facilitation technique called a consensus workshop, where you have everyone start grouping and categorizing all the ideas they came up with. (In my professional life, people I work with are trained in this method from an org called Institute of Cultural Affairs.) Having your group synthesize together, either in the same meeting as the brainstorming, or at another time, can be valuable (and put less pressure on the organizers to do all the synthesizing).
Yes big time, love doing this! I'm finding these days that we end up running out of time in an hour long session, but I think this has more to do with how that time is (or isn't) facilitated than it being impossible to do in that amount of time.
Oh I LOVE this - and dare I say, I've started to be a little more selective on which collective brainstorming sessions we actually say yes to (or organise). I've realised, over the last few years that so many amazing folk in our space (ocean conservation) are going to design sprints/hackathons/brainstorms and having heaps of fun, only to realise that we're all actually far too busy working on our own stuff to take any of these fresh ideas forward - which ends up leaving a sad note to the gathering. Now I'm trying to channel all that rad energy into projects that already exist within the community - like, let's all get together and jam on how we can help X project have more impact.
This is such a real struggle, and it's part of the labor of organizing a group that some people don't even realize is there! This made me think of a facilitation technique called a consensus workshop, where you have everyone start grouping and categorizing all the ideas they came up with. (In my professional life, people I work with are trained in this method from an org called Institute of Cultural Affairs.) Having your group synthesize together, either in the same meeting as the brainstorming, or at another time, can be valuable (and put less pressure on the organizers to do all the synthesizing).
Yes big time, love doing this! I'm finding these days that we end up running out of time in an hour long session, but I think this has more to do with how that time is (or isn't) facilitated than it being impossible to do in that amount of time.
LOL at "There were snickerdoodles?" Possibly the perfect brainstorming food?!
Good one to share with my work colleagues, Elise. Thank you! I also appreciate Alice's follow up below.
Oh I LOVE this - and dare I say, I've started to be a little more selective on which collective brainstorming sessions we actually say yes to (or organise). I've realised, over the last few years that so many amazing folk in our space (ocean conservation) are going to design sprints/hackathons/brainstorms and having heaps of fun, only to realise that we're all actually far too busy working on our own stuff to take any of these fresh ideas forward - which ends up leaving a sad note to the gathering. Now I'm trying to channel all that rad energy into projects that already exist within the community - like, let's all get together and jam on how we can help X project have more impact.