mic check: some thoughts about meetings and technology
Last night I decided to go the Occupy Boston GA, partly because of wanting to show support for the occupiers after the eviction from Dewey Square, partly to see if I could find out what would happen next and also partly because of a conversation I had on Friday. On Friday at noon, I went down to Dewey Square to sing protest songs with the Dewey Square Ad Hoc Chorus. I got into a conversation with Heather from Occupy Maine. I expressed being curious about how the GA worked, and she said, "oh you really should go to one. The GA is the cerebral cortex of the movement." Well that was pretty intriguing and Saturday, with everything that was going down then, was my first opportunity, so it seemed like an imperative.
It was a rather remarkable experience. Something on the order of 700 people showed up in the dark and the cold and stood, calmly and reasonably discussing and making progress, for well over two hours. In my experience, the usefulness and coherence of a meeting as a way of getting work done (as opposed to presenting information or being in some way a performance) goes down rather fast as you exceed the number of people who can sit around a table. And that wasn't what was happening here. It wasn't a fast or painless process by any means (also, did I mention, cold?) but it didn't fall apart as we passed the limits of people having conversation either.
I can't claim to be an expert about how the GA works after one meeting (though I sure plan to go back and learn more) but I walked away from the Boston Common full of thoughts about one aspect of the evening, which was the People's Mic. If you haven't seen this in action, it's a workaround for not having amplified sound. One person calls out "mic check" until the crowd is repeating back "mic check" . Then they start their message, repeated word by word and phrase by phrase by each person who can hear the message. The message moves back in waves until all can hear. It doesn't seem like it would be very effective but, in fact, it's remarkable in how it affects the dynamics of the meeting. Herewith a list of some of my thoughts in the last 24 hours.
1. The absence of amplification is a (relatively petty, in the scheme of things) attempt to damage Occupy's ability to organize. It started in New York, and refusing to give a permit for amplified sound has become a standard tactic for city govenrments. The workaround of the People's Mic makes the point, loud and clear so to speak, that we can collectively overcome obstacles to success.
2. Repeating what you hear requires attentive listening and fosters engagement. It also encodes the information on another channel over just hearing it, improving the learning experience. I found the GA to be surprisingly free of background conversations and side chatter, due primarily to this need to attend and repeat.
3. "We are all leaders" is more that just a slogan. Anyone, anywhere in the crowd can call out "mic check". With amplification, we'd still all be leaders but only some of us would have the microphone. That would have a negative effect on the sense of equality and horizontal distribution of power in the GA.
4. In most groups, the louder-voiced people are at a substantial advantage of being heard. Softer voices tend to get ignored. With the People's Microphone, a lot of that difference is equalized. Softer voices are amplified just as much and there is less of difference in influence.
5. The People's Mic changes the language of the discourse. First of all, it rewards succinct communication and simple, jargon free language. Polysyllabic latinate jargon intensive compendiums of buzzwords trail off into muttering, while pithy words, expressed with feeling, echo loud.
6. That doesn't at all mean that the People's Mic suppresses complex ideas. Uma Spencer read her declaration of principles, a several paragraph speech. She had people's complete attention throughout.
7. The act of repeating what other people are saying changes what is expressed. In most meetings I have been in, facts and rationality have been privileged over expressions of feeling and personal experience. "I" statements are frowned upon and thus people wind up cherry-picking the facts that support the argument they want to make. In the GA, many people began with "I feel that" or "This is what happened to me". These statements evoked empathy and solidarity rather than seeming off topic or "too personal".
8. A tenet of the practice of active listening is to repeat back what you have heard, in hopes of postponing your instant reactivity at least until you have confirmed the other speaker's intentions. The People's Mic process mirrors active listening, which probably leads to more thoughtful responses.
9. The People's Mic is completely portable, completely free, independent of the grid, and uses no fossil fuels. It can't be confiscated in a police raid.
10. The People's Mic enables instant translation services. Behind me at the GA, someone was mic'ing into, I think, Portuguese, for the benefit of a small group around him. One could easily imagine using this feature widely and deliberately.
11. The People's Mic is not value free. One speaker said something that felt just wrong to me -- on the edge of incitement to violence rather than a non-violent rallying cry. And without even thinking about it, I did not repeat that sentence. Those weren't my words even in a tentative way. While in that case, I was one of only a few people who understood that phrase in such a negative way, I believe a speaker whose words seriously went against the values of the GA would find himself with a "broken mic" so to speak.
12. Back to language and the use of it.
The Peoples Mic
encourages
a particular cadence
that reminds me of
nothing so much as
William Carlos William's experiments with the broken line.
Williams
who wanted to find in his poems
an authentic
American
voice;
whose poems included common people
and the sores and scars of urban existence
not the usual subjects for poetry;
whose final masterful poems
celebrated the victory of love
and of the light
even against the certainty of death --
he would hear poetry
in these voices echoing in the GA.
ETA: link to Uma Spenser's speech, and less draconian LJ-cut
It was a rather remarkable experience. Something on the order of 700 people showed up in the dark and the cold and stood, calmly and reasonably discussing and making progress, for well over two hours. In my experience, the usefulness and coherence of a meeting as a way of getting work done (as opposed to presenting information or being in some way a performance) goes down rather fast as you exceed the number of people who can sit around a table. And that wasn't what was happening here. It wasn't a fast or painless process by any means (also, did I mention, cold?) but it didn't fall apart as we passed the limits of people having conversation either.
I can't claim to be an expert about how the GA works after one meeting (though I sure plan to go back and learn more) but I walked away from the Boston Common full of thoughts about one aspect of the evening, which was the People's Mic. If you haven't seen this in action, it's a workaround for not having amplified sound. One person calls out "mic check" until the crowd is repeating back "mic check" . Then they start their message, repeated word by word and phrase by phrase by each person who can hear the message. The message moves back in waves until all can hear. It doesn't seem like it would be very effective but, in fact, it's remarkable in how it affects the dynamics of the meeting. Herewith a list of some of my thoughts in the last 24 hours.
1. The absence of amplification is a (relatively petty, in the scheme of things) attempt to damage Occupy's ability to organize. It started in New York, and refusing to give a permit for amplified sound has become a standard tactic for city govenrments. The workaround of the People's Mic makes the point, loud and clear so to speak, that we can collectively overcome obstacles to success.
2. Repeating what you hear requires attentive listening and fosters engagement. It also encodes the information on another channel over just hearing it, improving the learning experience. I found the GA to be surprisingly free of background conversations and side chatter, due primarily to this need to attend and repeat.
3. "We are all leaders" is more that just a slogan. Anyone, anywhere in the crowd can call out "mic check". With amplification, we'd still all be leaders but only some of us would have the microphone. That would have a negative effect on the sense of equality and horizontal distribution of power in the GA.
4. In most groups, the louder-voiced people are at a substantial advantage of being heard. Softer voices tend to get ignored. With the People's Microphone, a lot of that difference is equalized. Softer voices are amplified just as much and there is less of difference in influence.
5. The People's Mic changes the language of the discourse. First of all, it rewards succinct communication and simple, jargon free language. Polysyllabic latinate jargon intensive compendiums of buzzwords trail off into muttering, while pithy words, expressed with feeling, echo loud.
6. That doesn't at all mean that the People's Mic suppresses complex ideas. Uma Spencer read her declaration of principles, a several paragraph speech. She had people's complete attention throughout.
7. The act of repeating what other people are saying changes what is expressed. In most meetings I have been in, facts and rationality have been privileged over expressions of feeling and personal experience. "I" statements are frowned upon and thus people wind up cherry-picking the facts that support the argument they want to make. In the GA, many people began with "I feel that" or "This is what happened to me". These statements evoked empathy and solidarity rather than seeming off topic or "too personal".
8. A tenet of the practice of active listening is to repeat back what you have heard, in hopes of postponing your instant reactivity at least until you have confirmed the other speaker's intentions. The People's Mic process mirrors active listening, which probably leads to more thoughtful responses.
9. The People's Mic is completely portable, completely free, independent of the grid, and uses no fossil fuels. It can't be confiscated in a police raid.
10. The People's Mic enables instant translation services. Behind me at the GA, someone was mic'ing into, I think, Portuguese, for the benefit of a small group around him. One could easily imagine using this feature widely and deliberately.
11. The People's Mic is not value free. One speaker said something that felt just wrong to me -- on the edge of incitement to violence rather than a non-violent rallying cry. And without even thinking about it, I did not repeat that sentence. Those weren't my words even in a tentative way. While in that case, I was one of only a few people who understood that phrase in such a negative way, I believe a speaker whose words seriously went against the values of the GA would find himself with a "broken mic" so to speak.
12. Back to language and the use of it.
The Peoples Mic
encourages
a particular cadence
that reminds me of
nothing so much as
William Carlos William's experiments with the broken line.
Williams
who wanted to find in his poems
an authentic
American
voice;
whose poems included common people
and the sores and scars of urban existence
not the usual subjects for poetry;
whose final masterful poems
celebrated the victory of love
and of the light
even against the certainty of death --
he would hear poetry
in these voices echoing in the GA.
ETA: link to Uma Spenser's speech, and less draconian LJ-cut