rheingold's brainstorms: rheingoldian writing

Orders taken, drinks in hand, everyone in place, the topic is then discussed. If a few people begin to drift off-topic be vigilant, pull them back in. It’s not only a single topic but also a single conversation. Everyone listens to everyone. Everyone who wants to speak, speaks. Foster a self-awareness of convo-monopolization.

Rules outline how you’ll interact with each other. Because you decided on these norms together, you feel ownership in them. More so than if someone mandated from the top-down how you were allowed to act.

We need more shared intentions about how we do things in virtual spaces. Some of them are just being written as we go, like when you’re on a Zoom call with more than four people, you mute your microphone, you know?

A more sensible way to think about where conversations need to be broken up, that’s not topic, is format. In a physical space, the analogy might be—if half of my guests are drinking wine from expensive stemware and half of my guests are playing Twister, I might send the Twister players into another room so they don’t elbow-knock a glass of Chablis.... See more