Confluence: The Book

It's done. The new book is ready for you to read. It has an Amazon page with print and Kindle versions, plus a web site (at cfkurtz.com/confluence) with downloadable excerpts and exercise materials. You should also be able to order the book at your local book store (ISBN: 978-0-9913694-1-6).

Confluence is about the ways in which organized plans (like roads) and self-organized patterns (like traffic) intermingle and interact in our lives, families, communities, and organizations. It's about complexity, but it's not just about complexity. It's about how the structures and procedures we design and the spontaneous patterns that emerge as we interact co-occur, intersect, and press on each other.

The book revolves around the use of seven "thinking spaces," blank canvases you can use to explore organization and self-organization in situations and from perspectives that matter to you. Each space explores a different aspect of confluence. A group exercise helps you use the spaces to make sense of things together.

Aside from the first chapter (which introduces the book) and the third chapter (which explains the group exercise), most of the book uses the seven thinking spaces to explore a variety of situations, from ghost towns to factories to folk tales to mirages. I wrote these explorations for two reasons. First, I wrote them to use the spaces in front of you, so you can see how you can use the spaces yourself. And second, I wrote the examples to help you practice using the spaces as you read and think about my explorations.

Thank you

I would like to say a great big thank you to my wonderful group of 25 "early readers," who sent me feedback on the book and helped me improve it tremendously. Some people sent just a few bits of feedback, and some sent extensive notes. Every bit of it was helpful.

The journey so far

I developed the first of the book's seven thinking spaces in 2001 at IBM. For a time it was part of the Cynefin sensemaking framework. In 2010 I renamed the space the Confluence sensemaking framework and posted it here on my blog. At that time I added three more spaces. But then I got busy with other matters (mainly Working with Stories and NarraFirma) and put the whole thing aside. 

Two summers ago, I finally decided that it was time to go back to Confluence and see what it wanted to be next. At first I thought it should be a game, but it quickly morphed into a book. I wrote the first chapter in two weeks, so I thought the book might flow out in a matter of months. It did, but the number of months was close to twenty-four. 

Some of the spaces were fine the way I had them, but some were embarrassingly awful, and I threw them out and started over from scratch. Most of the chapters took two or three months to work out and write. A few took four or six or even eight months.

I finished the writing in January of this year. Since then I've been busy getting feedback, improving usability, and getting the book ready for publication. Finally it is published and ready to read.

What comes next

I have no idea. 

I've been thinking about this topic since roughly 1989, and I will probably continue to think about it as long as I can think about anything. I don't know what anyone will do with what I have created. I know that people have used some of these thinking tools in the past and found them useful. I have a sense that more people might find them useful in the future. That sense has carried me through the past two years, even through the months when it seemed like I was wasting my time writing this book. So I'll see what people do with what I have created this time, on this pass over the idea.

I do have a few plans. I'm not big on promotion -- I usually want to move on to the next project on my list -- but I have been asked to talk about the book by something like three or four people who have podcasts, newsletters, interviews, that sort of thing. So I'll do those. If you have a podcast or interview series and want to have me talk about the book on it, drop me an email.

It is possible that I'll end up doing some consulting or coaching related to helping groups use the confluence thinking spaces in their projects. I don't know. What I do know is that this book wanted me to write it. So I did. And I'll see what happens next.

If you have a comment on the book, or advice, suggestions, or anything, feel free to let me know.

Togetherness

A while back I was on a discussion list and people were talking about biological symbiosis as a metaphor for people communicating and collaborating. As a former biologist, I felt a responsibility to respond, so I wrote a sort of quick guide to sociality in the non-human world. Several people later thanked me for the essay, so I thought I might as well post it here, in case it's helpful to anyone else.

There are quite a few biological terms that describe points along the spectrum from cooperation to shared identity.

Within the same species:

- Kin selection describes how organisms "altruistically" help other individuals that are related to them genetically. (I place "altruistically" in quotes because benefiting your genetic makeup is not what we usually think of when we think of altruism.)

- Group selection describes how larger social groups help each other and compete with other groups for survival. This one is controversial as some think it exists (E. O. Wilson is a famous proponent) and some think it's a fiction. (I think it sounds plausible, but that doesn't mean it's real.)

- Reciprocal altruism is another mechanism that can cause organisms to help each other, in a tit-for-tat way. Game theory has lots of useful names to describe how organisms and other entities interact.

- The term "culture" is used to describe the social passing on (teaching) of knowledge (such as how to make a stick into a termite-catching tool) in some non-human species. Whether this use of the term is legitimate has been under debate for a long time.

- Eusociality, or a regulated social order, exists in some insects (like bees and ants), crustaceans (some shrimp) and mammals (the naked mole rat is the famous example). In eusocial species, "queens" usually control the social order (using pheromones), with individuals being born into defined "castes" that define their choices. The colony acts in some ways as an individual, but only partly due to self-organization (since pheromonal control is not self-organization but organization).

- A colonial organism (or collective organism or superorganism) consists of individual organisms that sometimes self-organize to take on the roles of specialized "organ" cells and sometimes don't. Examples are slime molds and some kinds of sponges. Whether these things are many organisms or one depends on when and how you ask the question.

- A modular organism is one whose components have specific functions, but whose total form is essentially a Lego-like composition of modules. Plants are modular organisms. It is hard to say whether a modular organism is an organism or a very highly regulated colony.

- A clonal colony is an association among genetically identical organisms (clones) that, while seeming to be separate, are actually connected. (Think spider plants.) The most famous example of a clonal colony is Pando, a giant colony of quaking aspen in Utah that covers over 100 acres. Though Pando looks like a forest, it is actually one giant tree.

In the places where the taxonomical kingdoms meet (plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, other tiny things) there are many cases of species where it is unclear which of these mechanisms are going on. Reading about them makes your whole sense of what is individual and what is collective lose its coherence.

Between species:

- Guilds are associations among species that forage together. The species in guilds are not related, but seek similar (though not identical) food sources that are found in the same places. Guilds tend to protect each other to a minimal extent. For example, animals in guilds usually heed alarm calls of other species in the guild.

- Mobs are temporary groups that can form among species that face predation together. You might see several species of small birds joining up to mob (attack) a hawk flying overhead. These associations are opportunistic and shifting.

- Mutualism is a relationship between species that depend on each other. A perfect example of mutualism is the relationship of people with their gut bacteria. Neither of us could survive without the other.

- Parasitism is the long-standing reliance of one species on another, to the detriment of the species being relied on - though never detrimental enough to kill the species (or individual), because then the arrangement would cease to be useful to the parasite.

- Commensalism is a relationship between species where they help each other, but so indirectly that you have to look closely to notice it. Usually such indirect help passes through the environment. When a beaver builds a dam, many species such as fish, frogs, and the water fowl that eat fish and frogs gain critical habitats through the self-interested actions of the beaver, which is largely unaffected by their use of the beaver pond.

- Symbiosis is the long-standing reliance of two or more species on each other, such as the relationship between clownfish and anemones. These connections are not temporary or opportunistic or even cognitive, but develop evolutionarily, over long periods of time.

Species can pass back and forth over the boundaries between mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, and symbiosis over evolutionary time, as the costs and benefits to each species can vary. Some relationships among species are hard to classify and can depend on other factors such as the environment in which both species find themselves. Is that bird picking lice on a wildebeest's back helping or hurting? How about when it pecks a little harder and starts to drink the wildebeest's blood? How about when the lice become more dangerous to the wildebeest? It gets tricky.

- Coevolution is a situation where species affect each other's genetic evolution. Coevolution can involve any of the interactions between species mentioned here (and probably more I've forgotten to list). For example, many flower shapes and colors evolved in such a way that their pollinators could find them more easily. Mimcry is another interaction that often comes up in coevolution.

As to whether any of these terms work as metaphors for people doing positive things together: they all do, and they all don't. My advice for anyone who wants to use a metaphor from science to describe human social endeavors is: read enough about the term to understand its full implications. Explore its internal arguments. I've seen so many people "go shopping" in science for metaphors that will prove their point, then ignore what the word actually means in order to shoehorn it into whatever meaning they want it to have. As one example, people often use "coevolution" to mean cooperation. That's a mistake, because coevolution can go horribly wrong and often does.

My personal preference is to avoid metaphors that turn people into non-people, because those metaphors always tend to be, well, dehumanizing. As I see it, there are already lots of useful terms that describe people interacting with each other in positive ways. After all, we've been doing it for a while.

Narratopia Revisited

Guess what? I've been working on Narratopia again. In case you don't know: Narratopia is a game of conversational story sharing for 3-6 people. You build a web of connected stories about anything you like. You go on a journey of discovery by exploring experiences and connections. The game helps out by giving you ideas for questions to ask, connections to make between stories, and tokens of appreciation to give each other.

This blog post is about the design of Narratopia's third edition. If you don't care about the details and just want to see what Narratopia looks like now, watch this video.

Now, for the curious, let's get into the details of the redesign.

Narratopia has been available for purchase since the end of 2015. It has sold between 40 and 50 copies (I'm not exactly sure because I gave some away). I've gotten scattered feedback. A few people have given me detailed comments, which have been very useful. And the passage of time has helped me to get a new perspective on the game. (There's nothing like ignoring something for a while to give you new ideas about it!)

When I came back and took a good look at Narratopia, my first thought was: it's so cluttered. I was trying to get across certain themes and messages, but I tried to pack in too much. What the game needed was simplicity: of concept, design, gameplay. So I set myself the task of removing every obstacle that held people back from being immediately able to understand the game, play it, enjoy it, and remember it fondly.

First I'll talk about the game's visual design.

The look of the playing cards

Here are the backs of the question cards in all three editions of the game.

And the game's connection cards (which link stories together).

Narratopia's theme has always been about hearkening back to a past in which we habitually shared more of our own stories. In the first version I went back only a few centuries. As you may recall from my last blog post on this topic, that didn't work well. People thought the game was about fine art, or museums, or history. So for the second version I went back further, into the prehistoric past.
This was a good idea in principle, but I cluttered up the visual presentation.

What happened was, I went looking for pictures of rocks, and I found a nice photograph of a rock with pine needles and pine cones around it. I thought if I drew something on the rock, it would convey a sense of discovering something ancient and valuable. But my message was lost in too many layers of conflicting meanings. The drawing on the rock was hard to make out, and people were more likely to think the game was about appreciating nature than to see it as discovering something ancient.

This time through I decided to see how simple I could make the card backs. First I removed the words entirely, opting instead to work toward a visual language. I went back to browsing photos of cave art and petroglyphs, looking for symbols that could convey meaning more simply. For connections I kept coming back to this photo of intertwined spirals. (There are many similar, but I liked this one best.)

It seemed to me the perfect symbol of a connection, so I copied it for the connection card, then simplified it some more. Previously I had been using an image of an arrow for connections, but that was too one-sided. An intermingling of two stories, like a handshake or embrace, was a better image for a narrative connection.

For the question cards I liked the spiral question mark I had already been using, so I kept it pretty much as it was. It came originally from spiral petroglyphs that seemed to suggest question marks, like these:

I think - I hope - the new card backs evoke timeless symbols and natural patterns while being clear about what they represent.

The color gradations on the cards came from noticing that most of the petroglyphs I saw were carved or painted onto rock faces with subtle gradations in color, often in horizontal bands. In fact, I sampled the colors for the card backs directly from two photographs whose colors I particularly liked, one a pale blue-grey boulder, the other a reddish-brown cliff face.

The look of the box

Okay, so we've covered the card backs. Let's move on to the box. These are the three box fronts.

The first Narratopia box was a tiny thing, because in the beginning all I had was a bunch of cards. The second box was, like the cards, too cluttered. You can barely see it at this scale, but there was a drawing on the rock. It was supposed to be a person telling other people a story around a fire. It looked like this:

I don't think very many people got what I was trying to put into that image. I would say, "See, this is a campfire, and this person is telling a story about a bear, and these people are hearing it" - and they'd say "Ohhh, I see it," in that polite way that meant they hadn't seen it before I said that.

So for the new box design, I looked through more petroglyph images for a simpler symbol that could represent story sharing. In petroglyphs and cave art there are many symbols of radiating energy, possibly representing the sun or fire. Some have rays; some have dots; some have spirals; some have concentric circles; some have sections like an orange.

So I thought, why not simplify my drawing of people around a fire to dots around a spiral? That might communicate the concept of energy or warmth in the center of a group. 

I think it works a lot better. The spiral represents the energy you get from sharing stories. The dots represent people sharing stories. The colors evoke sandstone cliffs against a bright blue sky. It's a color set you often see in the dry places where petroglyphs have survived. It's a bolder image, but still (hopefully) evocative of a valuable, forgotten past. There's also a subtle pattern of repeating petroglyphs in the blue background. This is because when you look at petroglyphs they are often layered on top of each other, some dominant and some barely visible, and often at different scales. (And because a huge expanse of undifferentiated blue would be boring.)

Another thing about the box: in the first and second editions of the game, I used inexpensive boxes  made of flimsy cardboard. That didn't work out well. The game box seemed to warp after you took everything out and put it back a few times. So this time I opted for a nicer box with thicker cardboard. It costs more ($10 instead of $6) but I think it's worth it.

The look of the tokens

So that covered the cards and box. The only thing left to simplify was the things people give each other after each story is told. I had been calling the things reflection cards, because people were meant to reflect on the story. But again, that was too subtle a point, and people didn't understand it, and I grew to hate it. So I started thinking about how I could simplify the things-you-give as well.

I had chosen to use small playing cards for the things-you-give because it seemed like every other option gave players a chore to do, such as to punch out tokens or put stickers on game pieces. I didn't think people would want to do chores. But the small cards turned out to be a mistake, for four reasons.

1. Having three sets of playing cards was too confusing. Cards and cards and cards is too many kinds of cards.
2. People still had a chore to do, because they had to sort the reflection cards, which came all jumbled together. So I wasn't saving them any trouble. 
3. I bought a bunch of card and board games to see what other people were doing, and I realized that quite a few games have punch-out things. Also, we didn't mind knocking the things out of the sheets they came in at all. In fact, it was kind of fun. It gave you a getting-ready feeling. So not only was I not saving people from a chore, I might have been taking something fun away from them.
4. Most importantly, I realized that the shape of a playing card has meaning. People expect to do things with playing cards - take an action, build a suit, move a step. They don't expect to give cards as gifts. To use the cards I had in the way I intended, people had to forget what playing cards (in that shape) usually do and use them in a strange new way. I could see that people had a hard time understanding and remembering that. They would read the instructions and say, "We're supposed to give these cards to each other? Why?"

As I was thinking about these things, I kept thinking about river pebbles. You know those little round pebbles you find when you're out walking by a stream or a lake, and they're so beautiful you just have to bring a few home, and when you get them home they don't look nearly as pretty as they did in the water? Those. So I changed the reflection cards to little round punch-out tokens, and started calling them - guess what - "tokens." Now they look like this (showing both sides of each token).

You do have to punch the tokens out of the sheets they come on (six per sheet), but it's ten times easier than I expected. I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of trying it before.

I kept the same images on all but one of the tokens. The heart image had been bothering me because it doesn't appear on any real petroglyphs, so I went hunting and found another symbol that could work for "I was moved by what you said," a soaring bird. The rest are the same, except that I made them even more like the carvings that inspired them, which are these:

I drew the new token colors directly from photographs of river pebbles, like this one. The colors are not very different than they were, but they're more earthy and natural looking, and I like how they complement each other.

Here is how the new tokens compare to the old reflection cards. You can see that I freed up a lot of space by taking away the word "reflection" and the this-is-a-reflection-card icon, neither of which are now needed because the shape of the token says that. (Which is obvious, now.)

There's only one thing I don't like about the tokens now, and it is that they are tiny. They are three quarters of an inch in diameter. One-inch tokens would make the game cost an extra ten dollars, and they would be laser-cut, which apparently leaves soot around the edges and a strange smell. Of course, this problem will go away if I ever am able to move past print-on-demand, or if thegamecrafter.com (TGC) ever gets one-inch card-stock tokens. Even so, I wouldn't want the tokens to be bigger than, say, an inch and a quarter. They're nice small. They feel like things you should be passing around.

Okay, so that's pretty much all of the changes that are primarily to visual design. Next are some gameplay improvements.

Rule simplifications

I made five small changes to the game rules that simplify the cognitive structure of the game.

1. The number of questions. The instructions used to say that each player (other than the person whose turn it is) should ask "one or two" questions each about the story. I have now simplified the rule so that each player must ask exactly one question about the story. This trims away a decision point (how many questions should I ask?), and it makes the game lighter and faster moving.

2. The number of tokens. The instructions used to say, "Any player can give any number of reflection cards (including none) to any other player." Apparently this was super confusing. People spent a lot of time figuring out how many tokens to give to whom. I even observed one group so flummoxed by this instruction that they ignored the reflection cards entirely. So I changed the rule to match the "one question per player" rule. Now each player, including the storyteller, must give exactly one token to one other player. Contrary to my expectations, this restriction makes the game more enjoyable. No muss, no fuss, just pick up a token and bestow it. The new rule also makes it more clear that the storyteller must also choose a token to give out, which puts less emphasis on the story and more on the conversation.

3. Where the tokens are. The instructions used to say that you should give everyone a pile of tokens at the start of the game. As a result people ended up having to manage two piles of tokens: those they got at the start (and hadn't given out yet), and those they had received. Everybody got the piles mixed up.

As I was thinking about this, I remembered the bank in Monopoly (which I always volunteered to manage so as to be in a better position to embezzle funds). That made me think of a "token bank," a place for the tokens to sit before people pick them up and give them to other people. In the parlance of TGC, it's an 8x8 inch card-stock "mat," and it looks like this:

At the start of the game, instead of giving out tokens, you place them (sorted) on the token bank. Then people draw tokens from the bank to give to each other. This improves the game in three ways.

1. It's nicer to deal out only two sets of cards at the start of the game.
2. Before, I had to have all this messy stuff in the instructions about giving out 10 tokens each if there were 3-4 people and 15 tokens each if there were 5-6 people. With the token bank that problem goes away, because you can just put all the tokens on the bank and not worry about how many are left over.
3. Most importantly, when I played the game like this, it felt better. I particularly liked the image of a bank of gratitude and appreciation sitting there waiting to be distributed. It created a feeling of anticipation for what was to come. 

I also increased the number of tokens from 90 to 150, because a greater variance in token choices creates more varied game endings. Before, your choices late in the game were governed by what types of tokens you had left. Now you are free to skew wildly in favor of one or two types of token. Six players giving one token each while six players tell three stories each will use 6x6x3=108 tokens, leaving 42 extra that nobody chose. That means if nobody ever chooses a "you made me think" token (for example), you still won't run out of tokens to give out. Of course three players will have far more tokens than they can use (3x3x3=27), but it won't matter because of the token bank. You never use all the Monopoly money either.

Anyway, when we played the game with the token bank in place, it became immediately apparent that we needed a similarly fancy place to put the tokens after we received them. Thence arose the personal token mat, which each player keeps in front of them:

This satisfies the gaming rule that "people like to have their own copies of things." It also helps people to remember what each symbol means, because the words are right there in front of them. (Thank you, helpfully forgetful test player.)

4. The number of cards. Because people don't have to come up with two questions per story anymore (or decide whether to ask two questions), people don't need as many question cards. So instead of five question cards and three connection cards, I've changed it so that people get four cards of each type. That's one less thing to remember and more brain power left over.

5. Trading cards. The instructions used to say that you could trade in one connection card per turn, and one question card on anybody's turn. This was to help people find better matches, because people kept complaining that they couldn't find good matches. But the trade-in rules were confusing, and hardly anybody remembered to use them. Because of the other simplifications above, and because of something else I'll tell you about later, I don't think the game needs this rule anymore.

These small changes don't alter the essentials of the game, but they make it run more smoothly. Trimming away unnecessary decisions frees up more mental capacity to enjoy the interactions between players, which are the heart of the game. Every time I removed one of these cluttery ambivalences, I could feel the game breathe more freely.

I can see now that in my first sets of instructions I spent too much time bothering people with uncertainty. What they needed was a clear and simple set of rules that would help them get started fast and keep moving.

It took me a long time to understand that game instructions do not define how a game should be played. They represent the start of negotiations about how a game should be played. When people play a board or card game, they read the rules, and they might play the game that way for a while, but eventually most people diverge into whatever way of playing the game suits them best, and they don't need the game's permission to do that. I was trying too hard to give people permission to make Narratopia work for them, but they already had permission, and my attempts to make the game flexible made it confusing. With these simplifications to the gameplay, the game feels lighter, less complicated, and more flexible.

A simplification that doesn't seem simpler until you take into account how people think

The next simplification I want to tell you about is a paradoxical one. Over the past two years, one of the things that kept nagging me about Narratopia was the blank spaces on the cards. Some of the connection and question cards have blank spaces you're supposed to fill in, like this:

Why did ___?

Some of the people who played the game saw those blank spaces and immediately thought of a dozen things to put into them. I did that, and my son did that, and two of my sisters did that. It seemed to us that everyone ought to find it easy to do that. But not everyone found it easy. My husband and another one of my sisters had a terrible time getting over the blank-spaces hurdle and enjoying the game. They weren't inspired by the blank spaces; they were frustrated. I saw a similar range of reactions in the other people I watched play the game.

So I went back to my cards and I thought - what if I gave those people some help? I tentatively added some suggestions to each card that had blank spaces, like this:

These extra texts don't fill in the blanks on their own, but they help people by marking out some of the types of things they might fill in the blanks with. They send people down avenues of exploration.

As I said, I did this tentatively, as an experiment. However, the value of it was immediately obvious in two places: the relief on my husband's face when he saw it, and my next look at the game's instruction sheet. I had all sorts of crutches in there for the filling-in-the-blanks hurdle: examples, reminders, encouragements, exhortations. By adding suggestions to the cards, I was able to cut the game's instructions in half. Anything that reduces how much you have to explain about a game has to be a good thing.

So I'm happy about the new suggestions. All of the cards with blank spaces have them (that's about half of the connection cards, and all of the question cards). Here's a connection card.

For those who need them, the suggestions are in the right place at the right time. Those who don't need the suggestions can ignore them, since they're small and pale and off to the side. When I played the game with the suggestions, I found that I ignored them most of the time. But when I couldn't decide which question or connection card to use, I read the suggestions to get more ideas. That was just what I meant them to do. They do add more words to the game, which seems like a complication, but they simplify the gameplay by helping people over little snags that come up as they connect things together.

Also notice the improved card fronts. I don't know what I was doing before with those borders and patterns and colors. This is simpler, and the paired symbols look more like what people expect playing cards to look like. They also make it easy to find cards that are upside-down, because the little symbols are upside-down too. The color gradations on the card backs serve the same purpose (that was a happy accident).

I also reduced the number of cards of each type (question and connection) from 50 to 42. The number of cards of each type originally started out at 24 and gradually increased (because people said they wanted more) to 50. But recently someone told me that some of the cards seemed too similar to each other. So I went back through the cards and tried to justify each one. Any card that I could not make the case for including - because it was uniquely useful - had to go. It just so happened that the number of cards I could justify in each case was 42.

Since I said I cut the instructions in half, you're probably wondering what I did with the freed-up back of the instruction sheet. Okay, you're probably not, but I'd like to tell you anyway. I added an explanation of how conversational storytelling works. (You can read it, and the new instructions, here.)

Why did I do this? Because I watched a fascinating series of videos in which three game buffs sat around talking about what they loved and hated about board and card games. One of the guys talked about how in any game there's a time when you're sitting there waiting for somebody else to do something, and you need something interesting to do while you're waiting. I asked myself what Narratopia had to offer someone in this situation, and I came up with nothing.

Then I remembered how much people love hearing about the research on conversational storytelling. People always say it gives them a whole new appreciation for stories in everyday life. So why not give players a chance to enjoy the game even more by learning about the ancient ritual they're participating in while they play? I think it will make the game more enjoyable. And because it's optional, it won't get in the way.

Definitely not a simplification, but exciting anyway

I've saved my favorite improvement for last. This idea grew out of four things that happened over the past few years. I'll try to get them into chronological order.

1. Every time my husband and son and I played Narratopia, after the game, I would pick up the story names we had written and feel a little sense of loss. I did keep the pieces of paper with story names on them, but I didn't have any sense that I would be able to get anything out of looking at them again. They were too fragmentary to mean much.
2. At a family get-together more than two years ago, I managed to get both of my parents and two of my sisters to play Narratopia with me. They gave me some great ideas. But the most important thing about that game, to me, was that my dad played it. After he died, I racked my brain to remember the stories he told, but I just couldn't remember them. I still can't. I wish I could.
3. On a story project I worked on two summers ago, I had some extra space left over on a story form (on paper). To fill up the page, I wrote, "You can write some notes on the story if you want to here." I didn't think anybody would write anything; I just didn't want the form to look incomplete. I was surprised to see that quite a few people wrote down their whole story in the space, even though they knew we had recorded the story as they told it and would be transcribing it. I watched some of the people as they did this. There was an energy to their concentration that is hard to describe. They seemed to have a hunger to get their stories written down. I began to wonder if we all have a hunger to get our stories written down, not for the world, but for ourselves and our families. We take a million pictures, but most of us never write down our stories.
4. One day a few months ago, I needed a piece of paper. I went rummaging through some drawers and found a notepad that was mostly used up. While looking through it for an empty page, I came across some scores from a game of gin rummy we had played some time before. As I looked at it, I felt this surge of happiness, just remembering the fun time we had.

Putting all of this together, I realized what was missing from Narratopia: a way to remember the game after it ends, after the moment is gone, maybe after the people who played it are gone. I said in the game instructions that people could make an audio or video recording of the game, but I knew when I wrote it that nobody would actually do that. The game needed a way to help people create a record, an account, a keepsake of the stories they told and the conversation they had. And the method of doing this couldn't be complicated or difficult. It had to be an easy, simple, natural part of the game itself.

So here's what I've done. Previously the game had people write their stories on an unprinted notepad. Now they write their stories on a printed story form with spaces to write specific things. The front of the story form looks like this:

That's what you see on the table when you're playing the game. It still has most of the space taken up by the name of the story, but there's a place to write who told it and what story it was told in response to. On the back of the card there is a place to record what happened in and around the story, thus:

This second side of the form will not be filled in during gameplay. People will fill it in just after the game has finished. I tried this after one game, and it was deeply satisfying. It scratched the itch I've been feeling about this game for a long time.

There's also a game form for preserving the memory of the game itself. It looks like this:

On this page you can write the date and location of the game and the names of the players. You can also write down how many tokens of each type everyone ended up with. The summation boxes on the right and bottom give you a chance to do a little bit of reckoning. (People love a bit of reckoning.) You can see who got the most tokens, and what sorts of tokens people got individually and collectively. This is actually a little bit of narrative sensemaking, in that a discussion might arise about why people got those tokens and what that might mean. (Now you can see why increasing the overall number of tokens is such a good idea. These numbers will actually mean something when you have more tokens to choose from.)

The back of the game form just has an open space to record any notes on the game itself.

I'm also adding ten plastic zipper bags that people can use to package their story forms into little bundles of memories they can keep in the game box and rediscover years later. My first bundle of story forms is sitting in my kitchen right now. I keep glancing at it as I walk by. This is the first time in all of the Narratopia games we've played in our house that I have something to look back on. I'm so glad to have it. Writing down the gists of the stories (and some of the questions and answers) only took me a few minutes, and it was fun to do. I think at least one person out of most groups will be interested in doing this. Of course, some people will not want to "make a memory" while playing a game, but that's all right; they can just ignore the backs of the story forms. For people who want to remember, this will make the game much more valuable.

The only thing I don't like about these new write-on forms is that they are expensive. If six people play the game ten times they will use up 180 story forms, so I've put that many in the box (because you should be able to play a game ten times before you run out of the stuff it comes with). Those 180 story forms, plus 40 game forms (40 is the smallest number you can have in a write-on pad), cost $16.44. That's more than the box ($10), the playing cards ($8.30), the tokens ($5.18), or the token-bank mats ($4.35). Add some other small costs (instructions, handling fee, etc), and you get to $50.99, nearly twice what the game cost before. (And that's without me making any money on printed copies. Well, TGC says I'll get 86 cents per game.)

Edit: After vacillating about that must-include-180-story-forms thing for weeks, I've switched back one more time and removed 80 of the story forms. This reduces the price of the forms to $10.46 and the overall price to $44.99. Now you can only play five games with six people before running out of story forms, but I've added the print-and-play file to the downloads (after purchase) so you can print as many more as you need. The $50.99 price just seemed too cringe-worthy.

However, I've decided that trying to keep the game cost down has been (paradoxically) keeping the game from moving forward, because I haven't been able to make it look and feel the way it should to succeed. These high costs are entirely due to the game being produced on demand in a small shop that prints every game with custom settings. If I was able to order hundreds of games, the cost would be much lower. Even TGC shows me a bulk cost (for 100 or more games) of $34.16 (now $30.56). To help with the high cost, I have created a print-and-play version of the game and am selling it for $8 (I will get $5.74 of that, so that's a good thing).

Moving forward

All right, so here's where we stand now. I have updated the web site for the new game design, and the new game version is available for purchase (in print and print-and-play versions) on TGC. And as you saw at the start of this post, I have a much improved video.

I see four ways forward for the game at this point.

1. It could continue as a niche product, printed one copy at a time by TGC, for essentially forever.
2. I could do a Kickstarter and collect orders to run a bulk process through TGC. I would need at least 100 people to pre-order the game to do this. I could even repeat this process once or twice a year, while keeping the game available on TGC in between (for the higher price).
3. I could do a larger print run, say of 500 or 1000 copies, and set them up with Amazon fulfillment. I could launch this with a Kickstarter as well.
4. I could try to get a publisher to take on the game.

I don't know which of these is best. All but the first depend on other people being interested in the game. The safest bet is to keep the game on TGC and wait to see what happens next. I think it's a good sign that I've sold 40-50 copies in a year and a half with exactly zero energy put into promotion and advertisement; but it's hard to know what that means about the future. I feel like the game needs more time to mature before it's ready for a big commitment (like a 1000-copy print run). Maybe a year from now I'll feel ready to take the plunge.

What the game needs most now is credibility. I need people to say they like it in public. TGC has reviews, and places to link to published game reviews, but I don't have any of either yet. So here's where I need to reach out to you.

If you have played Narratopia in the past and liked it, please consider posting a review on its thegamecrafter.com page. If you would like to write a review of Narratopia for a blog post or publication, send me an email (cfkurtz at cfkurtz dot com) and I'll send you a free copy of the game. You just have to promise to (a) actually write and publish a review (within a reasonable time frame), and (b) give me a link to your review and permission to quote a few sentences from it. A few of these reviews would give the game more of a presence.

As before, I am also interested in producing expansion packs and translations of the game. If you are interested in either of those things and want to work together, let me know. And thanks for your interest in Narratopia!

Conference report, part four: Cross method mapping

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts about two conferences I attended this fall (NCDD and NYSDRA).

1. I started by describing the Red-Blue Dictionary and the exercise I designed for it (which I call "Ground Truthing with Stories").
2. Then I described a new conferences-and-meetings variant of the "Twice told stories" exercise, called "Bubble up stories," I designed for a NCDD plenary session.
3. Then I described a "Sticker stories" landscape exercise I designed for a session on story work.

Now I'll talk about Cross method mapping with the Group Works cards.

As some will remember, I first started thinking about a way to connect the hundreds of methods and approaches that surround the practice of dialogue just after the 2014 NCDD conference opened my eyes to what I had been missing. I wrote about a "translation dictionary" I would like to create, to connect the approaches listed in various places in a more vital and substantial "matrix of meaning" than can be found when methods are simply compiled into lists (as valuable as that can be).

I held this idea in my mind for a year or so. I talked with probably 20 people about it, and I got a few people to try some experiments reaching out from one approach to another. Last spring I wrote about the evolution of my thinking on the idea, describing one such attempt to reach out. In that blog post I mentioned the Group Works deck in my list of method lists.

Some of the people in the Group Works team saw my post and responded to it. In particular, they corrected my misstatement that the Group Works deck is a list of methods. It's not a list of methods; it's a list of patterns that lie under all of our methods for bringing people together. This initial contact prompted a weeks-long discussion (on their mailing list) in which I discovered that the reasons behind the creation of the Group Works deck were very similar to the reasons I had been thinking about a translation dictionary. During the discussion I realized that the "matrix of meaning" I was looking for had already been created. So I started thinking of ways to use the Group Works deck to help people reach out across the spaces between methods.

An enlightening conversation

Because it was such a productive discussion, I'd like to show some of it to you. This is a selection of the comments (from myself and others) that led to me connecting so strongly to the Group Works deck as a matrix of meaning. I've set apart the things other people said as quotes; everything is edited for length; the whole conversation is colored in blue (so you can tell when it stops); and I've bolded the words that seem most significant as I look back on it now.

I have considered the idea of creating a "matrix of meaning" in which various methods could "be suspended." Such a matrix could provide bridges between methods by its very existence, as air provides the means for sound to travel. Here's an idea: what if the Group Works patterns were the matrix?

What might be useful would be creating a 'decision tree' for methods. What critical questions do skilled group process leaders and facilitators actually ask themselves when deciding which method to use? My guess would be that the decision criteria each facilitator uses are often irrational and sub-optimal, but that it would be difficult to change their method choices even if the 'decision tree' prompted them to do so. We all get familiar with certain methods that seem to have worked better for us, so we are inclined to use them instead of possibly better methods most of the time.

The tyranny of methods is one of the reasons I got involved with this project in the first place. Methods are just solutions looking for problems. Without understanding the pattern language of group process, or decent theory about how humans confront problems, think and act in complexity and collaborate, practitioners can become over reliant on methods to give them the answers they need to the question of “how should we work together.”

What I've been thinking is, if people had a way to take "baby steps" away from their familiar methods, steps that made sense to them along lines of connection that felt important, people might begin to explore more opportunities.

Anything that weans people away from methods is a fine idea! (And I say this as a method keeper, responsible for future editions of the Open Space Technology user’s guide!)

I see it as a particular responsibility of method keepers to balance promotion of our methods with attention to integration and cooperation. I don't want my method to "win" in a competition; I want to help people enlarge the range of tools they have at hand.

This theme of getting past the methods is exciting for me - when we were working on it [the Group Works deck, I assume] I referred several times to one of the goals as "facilitative Jeet Kune Do" (Bruce Lee's attempt to forge a martial art that went past the surface forms and was more fluid, spontaneous, and flexible).

What if skillfulness is not really about capacity with methods, but the underlying capacity to manipulate the overlying patterns? If so, what would a framework that could use methods as a means for patterns capacity building look like? If the facilitator is a chemist, my idea is probably seeing beyond the compounds in order to reach the periodic table. It doesn't override the utility of compounds, but it definitely changes the way we think about the compounds.

I really like this metaphor of the periodic table. What I have been looking for is a way to move from one compound to another through the mediating matrix of the periodic table. I can see that you (as a group) have already thought about this a lot, which is why this discussion is so interesting.

Each new pattern awareness or method brings up small Pandora's boxes which may be relatively manageable if the participating facilitator-student can intuitively, as well as rationally, appraise their own process, listen to their feelings at each step, and notice their emerging needs as they hit the white waters of the "martial" art of facilitating somehow differently. For example, that last sentence was way too long. If the process-concept came in smaller bites, it might swallow and digest better. One need may be frequent pauses to reflect and re-evaluate, even possibly with ... a buddy.

That feeling of being "stuck" in the methods we know (which we have all felt) implies inertia, or gravity, or a reluctance to travel. As I see it, there are two ways to help people overcome inertia and travel more widely. One is to help people become better travelers, and the other is to build better roads.

How to avoid the trap of walking the all-too-familiar roads instead of the ones we may not even be taking into account, to fulfill the purpose of discovering the world? My very humble guess is that the way most facilitators go about this existential dilemma is 1) Trial and error: "I did method X with that group and it was a disaster, what could have worked?" and/or 2) Association: "Oh, "your" method Y looks like "my" method X. Could you tell me more about it?"

I concur that a shift in assessment perspective can create the "safer ground" that significant learning requires. Shifting the lens through which we look can transform how we see "stuckness," how we feel about it and how we respond. By shifting our assessment lens from negative to neutral, from critiquing static behavior to viewing it developmentally--which means in context and over time--we can liberate the experimentation on which growth relies.

And to take it a step further, shifting from neutral to positive emotions "broadens and builds" (Fredrickson, 1998) our capacity to learn, innovate, and connect with other learners that is not a momentary experience, but persists and enables our individual and collective capacity going forward. Like this conversation. We're building some safety. We allow a bit of vulnerability, open up our hearts through empathy, and the collective field capacity increases.

I like the phrase "liberating experimentation." That's what I'm talking about - bringing a greater opportunity for low-intensity, everyday, just-fooling-around play to how we think about helping people do things together.

As a beginner, it's often very effective to mirror the behavior of more fluent practitioners. This is how we learn a native language, how to dance, carpentry, or facilitation. It's a learning mode that works. For beginners. Once we know the basics, it's time to improvise, being fully in formed by our previous knowledge.

It could be really interesting to do a workshop on facilitative methods using Group Works [to] showcase some of the best maps that have been put together so far for a bevvy of methods. It would be interesting to see the feedback from folks who were familiar with a given method as well as that from those who weren't.

It seems to me that each method is not only an initial scaffolding for beginners -- it is also a way for more advanced practitioners to connect with that method's particular underlying "signature pattern" or spirit. So for example, advanced practitioners of OST often talk about the spirit of Open Space, that goes beyond (and does not depend upon) the form...

And then the conversation wandered off onto other things, but I already had enough to work with. After this conversation I was sure that what needed to happen before the resource I envisioned could be created was the creation of a process that helped people take their first baby steps out of their comfortable method spaces. To do that I needed to help people create new connections in a spirit of empathy, safety, and play. What I needed was a game.

Growing a game

So I started playing games with the Group Works cards.

The first thing I noticed was that the Group Works people already have a game-like process in which people choose cards to represent and discuss any approach or method. They call it "Method mapping" and have been using it for years. During our discussion on the Group Works mailing list, somebody posted, as examples, some lists of Group Works cards people had chosen during four different Method mapping workshops. I copied those lists of cards into a spreadsheet, then chose some cards to represent a method I know well (PNI). Then I started juxtaposing the lists, putting them next to each other.

The first thing I wanted to do was count how many cards each pair of methods had in common. I thought that doing this might give me a sort of similarity score. It did. But as soon as I saw the similarity scores, I realized that they were boring and stupid. What I really wanted to know wasn't whether methods were similar, or how similar they were. I wanted to know why.

So I started to jot down some notes on why each card was chosen to represent each method. I went through the lists of cards and asked myself: "Why this card?" For cards chosen to represent the other method in each pair, I asked myself: "Why not this card?" Then I compared the lists of reasons.

This was far more satisfying. All sorts of intriguing questions opened up about where each method came from and where it wanted to go. I started to see more deeply into the values behind the methods, into their backgrounds, aspirations, and assumptions. Surprising things started to happen. Two methods that appeared to be similar at first glance might come from different values and beliefs, and two methods that seemed different might be working toward the same goals. A card held in common might highlight a difference between methods, and a card chosen for only one method might bring up a similarity.

A few examples will illustrate what I mean. Here are a few of the cards somebody chose to represent Appreciative Inquiry, with my guesses at the reasons they chose them:

• Appreciation: AI came out of (thus emphasizes) situations where "what is going on" has already been "talked to death," and nobody is thinking past well-known problems.
• Commitment: AI encourages people to move forward into a more positive future by appreciating the things that are already working but have been ignored by too much focus on problems.
• Common ground: AI focuses on helping people find common ground by discovering their shared hopes, dreams, and assets.

And here are my reasons for not choosing those same cards to represent participatory narrative inquiry:

• Appreciation: PNI came out of (thus emphasizes) situations where people have not yet had the freedom to choose and the right to be heard; thus to find out "what is going on" people must first be heard on their own terms.
• Commitment: This can happen in PNI, but PNI is designed to work well in low-participation and low-commitment situations as well, partly because those who know "what is going on" have not yet been heard.
• Common ground: This is a good emergent outcome of PNI, but it is not a requirement, because sometimes people are not yet ready for it. PNI focuses on meeting people where they are, because where they are is often not known at the outset.

That's just a few of the cards I considered as I compared the two methods, but I think it gives you a quick idea of their different goals and contexts. I've been aware of Appreciative Inquiry (as an approach to story work) for a long time. I've thought about its origins, context, and purpose many times before. But this exercise helped me to gain more insight into how PNI and AI can complement each other.

After some time playing with the various card sets by myself, I felt that it was time to bring in other minds. So I described what I had been doing on the Group Works mailing list, and I asked people if they would be willing to help me improve the process. Two people responded, and we went through method comparisons over Skype. Another colleague and I compared two methods using a physical card set. Going through the process with other people improved it tremendously, of course. I discovered some areas where we needed to talk through things I hadn't had to tell myself; other people had some great ideas I hadn't thought of; and some of the nerdy detail I couldn't help burdening the process with began to slough off. (It looked a little too much like Dungeons and Dragons at the start.)

Then it was suddenly June, and the call went out to submit proposals for the NCDD conference. At first it seemed like it wasn't going to happen, but then one day I got an email from Sue Woehrlin, one of the prime movers of the Group Works team, saying she'd like to give it a try. Hooray! We put together a proposal, and it was accepted. During the time between the proposal and the conference we managed to run through the process twice more. More of the nerdy barnacles got scraped off, and we were ready to bring the game to more people.

The instructions for carrying out the process/exercise/game expanded from a few paragraphs into a 14-page workbook (with spaces to record what went on) that could be written on for face-to-face use or annotated for online use. Sue brought copies of the workbook and the Group Works deck to the session for people to use.

Our blurb for the conference was as follows.

Bridging the Methodology Divide: Cross-Mapping with the Group Works Deck

You may have used the Group Works Deck to help you facilitate. You may have used it to understand D&D methods by mapping their essential elements. Now you can use the Deck to explore synergies between D&D methods. Join us as we explore cross-mapping, a process for bridging divides among methods. Together we will discover surprising similarities and differences across D&D approaches. You’ll have a hands-on experience comparing a method you know well with a method someone else knows well. You’ll gain a new tool to work with other practitioners developing custom facilitation solutions.

We had ten participants, and we ran two concurrent games. One group considered Open Space Technology and Reflective Structured Dialogue; the other worked with Structured Dialogic Design and Non-Violent Communication. We had to shorten the exercise time (from 90 to 60 minutes) to allow time for an introduction and debriefing/feedback, but people were able to do a good part of the exercise and see what it was like.

In our feedback session at the end of our time, someone said they had "increased curiosity" about the other method, "even though I was already full up" with methods. Somebody else said "this is a way to step outside your method and explore the spaces between." That was exactly what we were after.

Based on feedback during that session, I went back to the workbook and improved it yet again. At this point I think the process is as streamlined as it can be. I also changed the name from "cross mapping" to "cross method mapping" (per Sue's suggestion), because without the word "method" it's harder to understand at a glance what the game is about.

Now it's your turn

I invite you to download the workbook and play your own cross-method mapping game. No: I don't invite you. I challenge you to do this. If you advocate or support any approach or method that helps people talk or work or think together, find someone who can bring another method into the game, and reach out together into the spaces between.

You will need 90 minutes; at least two people who know two methods; the workbook, printed or online; and two copies of the Group Works deck, printed or online. Here's a brief overview of what you will do.

1. You'll split into two groups. Each group will choose 8-12 Group Works cards that represent the method they are considering. For each card they choose, they will write down their answer to the question "Why this card?" 
2. The groups will come back together into one group. Someone from each group will give a brief "bird's eye view" description of the method they are working with.
3. You'll sort the cards chosen by the two groups into three categories: in common; only in the first method; only in the second method.
4. Together you'll consider each card held in common between the two methods. You'll talk about what it means to each method and what it means that both groups chose it. You'll summarize what you've learned in writing, taking turns putting things into words.
5. Together you'll consider each card not held in common. Whichever group didn't pick that card will answer the question "Why not this card?" You'll discuss similarities and differences, and you'll work together to write down a summary of what you've learned.
6. You'll wrap up the exercise with one or more of four activities: reflect on what just happened; write a high-level comparison of the two methods; draw a decision tree that shows which method should be used when; or brainstorm a project that uses both methods together.

I hope you will choose to take up this challenge. If you do, please send me a note and tell me how it went and what you found out.

I would like to thank the people responsible for the Group Works deck for all the energy, cooperation, and creativity they have put into the deck over the years. Cross method mapping is only one of many activities people have created using the Group Works deck (you can find the full list on their web site). The fact that such useful activities can grow up in such short time frames attests to the value of the resource they have created.

I would also like to thank several people from the Group Works mailing list for taking the time to play the game and provide useful feedback. The ten people who attended our session at the NCDD conference also played an essential part in helping us validate and improve the game.

What I've learned so far

I've now participated in or watched people participate in the cross-method mapping game several times. Here's what I've learned so far.

Let's get curious. The number one outcome of playing this game, so far, that I've seen in myself and in everyone I have seen play it, is an increase in curiosity. People come out of the exercise interested in learning more about another approach. That isn't a guarantee that people will follow up and put actual time into learning about another approach; but it definitely makes it more likely that people will find the time to do so. Imagine if everyone involved in group facilitation played a game like this once a month, or once a quarter. Would it have an impact on the way we collectively use the methods at our disposal? I think it would.

Exploring our values. The second strongest outcome I've seen has been the exploration of values that lie behind methods, whether they are ones we know well or ones we have just heard about. It's easy to nit-pick about methods that seem to intrude on our turf when we know a method well. We've all done it. It's harder to keep up that stance when you have just explored the laudable values that lie behind other methods. Can hope be a bad thing? How about being heard, or being respected, or finding solutions together? The whole thing reminds me of this amazing video from Louis C.K.'s Horace and Pete show that everyone on this planet should be strongly encouraged to watch. Yes, there is a place for criticism. There is a place for evaluation. There is a place for debates over effectiveness. But we also need a place to engage in dialogue and bridge-building about the ways in which we help people engage in dialogue and bridge-building.

Let's have a party (game). This exercise is not just a game. It's a social game. Its rules create a sense of fairness, because everyone has to do - and gets to do - the same things. There is a symmetry to the game that sets people (and methods) up as equals. If my method has ten thousand adherents and is supported by several well-endowed institutions, and your method has a blog post and a five-person working group, we still use the same cards, get the same amount of time, and articulate our reasons in the same plain language. Games partially suspend "the rules of the real" to create a paradox: the safe exploration of the unknown. Every approach to group facilitation asks people to take this step into the unknown. It's only fitting that we who ask them ask ourselves to take the same step.

A model of method use

As part of my thinking about why we need bridge-building among bridge-builders, and what will meet our needs, I've been developing a sort of model that describes the journeys people take as they go through their careers helping people come together. This is based on my own experience and my conversations over the years with hundreds of people going through their own journeys. It seems to me that the typical journey goes something like this.

Everyone starts (in the lower left) with the initial convergence that attracts us to (or throws us into) the idea of helping people talk and think together. We are drawn to (or tasked with using) an obvious, dominant solution (because: there it is). We read books and manuals. We follow recipes. We make something work.

Some people stay at this first stage for a long time because it's all they need. Others discover a hunger (or a need) for more, leading them to a first stage of divergence. They explore a few or several options with enthusiasm. They read several books and take a few seminars, searching for the method or approach that will fit their needs and aspirations best.

But after a while, most people run out of energy and time to explore, and they settle on one or a few methods that fit their needs well enough. At this point people often become weakly tribal, in that they will defend those methods in a debate, but they haven't thought about them enough to put forth a detailed argument. They might feel a little guilty that they haven't explored more, but they're tired and busy, and things are working well enough.

As people keep doing group facilitation, they inevitably begin to accumulate useful experience. They develop unique insights that are valuable to others. Maybe they write about those insights. Maybe they give talks at conferences. Their confidence and curiosity grow together. They begin to wonder what else is out there. So they enter into a new stage of divergence, pushing out further, learning about methods that are not so obvious or dominant. They begin to see how different approaches might complement each other. They try a few experiments with method mixing.

It is after this second stage of divergence that journeys seem to bifurcate. Some people progress to a third divergence in which they develop a true beginner's mind that is open to all ideas. People in this state keep discovering greater and greater enthusiasm to explore. Eventually they reach the point where they no longer speak of particular methods at all, but use their portfolio of understandings to create new and unique solutions for every problem. When I think of this state, I always think of that moment in 2001 (the internet says: no, 2010) where the guy says, "My God, it's full of stars."

But the second divergence does not always lead to mastery. Sometimes people, having again become overwhelmed with complexity or difficulty, fall back into a new convergence which is more deeply tribal than the one that came before it. People in this state expend their energy on defending and strengthening their existing choices. Their previous short-lived burst of curiosity has done nothing but convince them that they've been there, done that, and got the t-shirt to show it. They look upon those who are still searching as deluded or confused, and they put their heads down and get back to work, using the tools they know to be effective.

At this point I see myself in the second stage of divergence. I've only been doing this work for seventeen years, which seems like an instant compared to the careers of some people I know. I'm still curious about what else is out there, but I can't say I've developed the confidence or the breadth of knowledge to move beyond methods entirely. I seem to hear about another new method or approach every few months, and while I can't keep up, I continue to want to try. Being a method keeper drags you down in the space, simply because your time is taken up by maintenance of the thing you bear responsibility for. That's why I think method keepers have a particular responsibility to boost their curiosity despite (or maybe because of) their need to focus inward. The City of Old Emperors is full of method keepers, and sometimes I hear it calling me.

Anyway, I've drawn arrows on my diagram where I think the cross-method mapping game, and other games like it, can help people move up to better and more curious places. If you recognize yourself or your group as being in any of the convergent portions of my model, exercises like this one should be of particular value to you.

One more thing about this model before I stop talking about it. As I was working on it, I realized that it reminds me of another model I've had in my mind for a long time (and indeed, maybe this one came from that one): a model of how people learn programming languages. Quite a few times I've needed to evaluate or interview people for programming tasks, and I've discovered that one question works best to find out where people are on their journey through the world of programming. The question is, "What is your favorite programming language?" The way people answer this question tells me more than any resume can say.

• If they say, "Well, I've only ever worked in" whatever language is in vogue lately, I know that they are in the initial stage of convergence, because they're using an obvious solution and haven't explored anything else. Of course, sometimes people are forced to use one solution or another; but people who have "caught the bug" of programming are rarely satisfied with that.
• If they talk about their experiences with three or four languages, I can see that they are in their first divergence, curious to find the one best language out there.
• If they know a few languages but exhibit weak tribalism about one of them (which you can always detect because their arguments for it don't hold up well to attack), I know that they have transitioned into their second convergence.
• If they talk about how they're still using mostly the languages they know well, but are intrigued by some of the new ideas coming down the pike, they're working their way into their second divergence.
• Those in their third convergence are the diehards who post long diatribes about the lost treasures of Lisp or the inimitable beauty of C++. Or they bristle at the joke "You can write FORTRAN in any language."
• Finally, the true masters of programming can write you out in five minutes a point-by-point decision tree populated with thirty languages you never heard of. And they write compilers on top of compilers for fun.

People in all of these stages can do great programming work, and people in all stages of my group-facilitation model can do great work with people. But I ask people the favorite-language question because, if the person is in a convergent stage, they are probably going to need help if I need them to play with new ideas (and since most of my software work is in prototyping, I need people who can do that). I say this without prejudice, because in the field of programming I myself am in my second convergence and regularly need to push myself out of my comfort zone to program well. I was once fascinated by new languages, decades ago, but I've slowly settled down into preferring Python and grumbling about everything else (because Python is obviously superior, though I ... can't say exactly why). When I hire myself to do programming, I force myself to play some "try a new language today" games, tutorials and things, to push myself up into the higher-curiosity space. Otherwise any kind of rapid prototyping I might do will be pretty much doomed to failure.

So I wonder if the same question might be useful to evaluate yourself as a group facilitator. What is your favorite method of group facilitation? Why?

What comes next

So, am I satisfied with this little social game? Does it scratch my itch? A little, but not enough. I'm excited by the emergence of the game, and I'm enthused about getting it out to people who can benefit from it. But it's not the whole solution to the problem. It can't be.

The most obvious reason this game isn't good enough yet is that it isn't done yet. They say in the game development world that a game isn't finished until it has been played 100 times. By that measure this game has a lot of maturing left to do.

But more importantly, even though the game can be played quickly and with a few people, and even though it's a fun, relaxing experience, it still represents a barrier to those who are reluctant to reach out beyond their comfortable places. That's a limitation that prevents the game from being the whole solution to the problem.

I've spent a lot of time in my work with stories thinking about micro-participation, that is, how to get people to put two minutes or five minutes into a project they don't see the point of (at least at first). That's because the bottleneck in story work is never technology or expertise or time or money. It's the time and attention of the people who tell the stories. You can set up the most amazing project in the world, but if people won't talk to you, or they talk to you but don't pay attention and don't really tell you anything, you've got nothing.

So I've thought a lot about barriers. A barrier can be a problem, because it turns people back from something that would benefit them and others. But a barrier can also be a solution, because it gives people a reward for the effort it took to breach the barrier. After you've passed the barrier, it no longer says to you, "You can't come in here." It says, "You are in! You succeeded! You are one of us!" So a barrier should be as low as possible, and no lower.

I don't think the cross-method mapping game, or any other people-in-a-room-for-an-hour activity, is low enough to get people to learn more about other methods. More precisely, I don't think it's low enough alone.

What else is needed? I keep coming back to my original idea of a resource, a place to play around with cross-method mapping a little at a time, on one's own, without talking to anyone. I keep seeing in my mind's eye something like a Google Earth for method space. I don't know about you, but I've flown around visiting all the places I've ever lived, or thought about living, or wished I could live. It's a blast. It's a kind of safe virtual travel into the past and into alternative universes where you never took that job or moved away from that house, or where you took that plunge you were afraid to take. I'd like to make something like that for group facilitation methods: a way to pan and zoom around in the world of group work, free of commitment, just surfing, a few minutes at a time, for fun.

Oh, sure, people do surf in the lists of methods that are available. I don't mean to put down the substantial efforts people have put into their method lists. But there is something about a list that doesn't lead to meandering. It's like the difference between a garden path and a street in a cookie-cutter housing development: one surprises the traveler with serendipitous views, and the other catalogues life into pretty little boxes. We need boxes, but we need paths as well, and it's the paths I want and can't find.

Some of the stuff I talked about in my earlier posts about this idea would still be needed to make such a map-like resource come into existence, whether people were playing the cross-method mapping game or not.

• Just like you can look at different time-stamped images in Google Earth, people need to see the history of each method and the context in which it was developed. 
• Just like you need a map legend that puts everything in one scale, people need translation dictionaries that help them move easily between jargon spaces.
• Just like a satellite image gives you details, people need fleshed-out case studies that connect abstract descriptions of methods to real things that have happened to real people.

(Okay, maybe you can't actually do all of those things in Google Earth. I'm remembering a mish-mash of all the times I've used Google Earth, or Google Maps, or Mapquest, or maybe some other things I forgot the names of, over the past 20 years. What ever.)

What would make the game we have developed turn into the resource I think we need? Lots of people playing the game lots of times, plus lots of people taking the things they get out of playing the game and uploading them to a place that has places to put all of the things. What I've seen so far is that playing this game gets people ready to contribute to a resource like the one I envision. I can imagine people coming out of playing such a game, logging on to a web site, and adding what they learned about the methods they played the game with. I can imagine such a site growing over time until it reaches a critical mass for low-barrier method-space messing-about. I can imagine such a site complementing method lists in such a way that people walk around without even realizing that they've crossed from one mode of experiencing the world of facilitation to another.

I can see two impediments to making this happen in practice. One: the effort would need a sponsor. Somebody would have to host and maintain and police such a site. I can't do that, because I habitually come up with ten times more plans than I actually have the time or resources to carry out. In fact, this blog post is probably as far as I can take this idea this year, on my own. So ... there's that.

The other impediment is the harder one: participation. The effort would need champions, cheerleaders, people with outgoing personalities who are good at getting people to do things. I am not such a person.

However, let us for the moment sweep those impediments aside and simply glory in the vision of a Google Earth for group work. I think we would like it. What say you?

Coming up next: more conferences and meetings, plus what I'm doing after I finish writing these blog posts.