Fight Club Fishbowl Format
Driving discussion in a downright engaging and participatory way - that's the magic of DevJam's 'Fight Club Fishbowl Format'. Have you ever been to a user group only to find the conversation dominated by one or two blowhards? Fight Club Fishbowl solves this with a simple formula, and is a large group discussion technique worth considering for your workshop, unconference, presentation, or user group.
Following a presentation, participants take a short break and submit questions on an index card. Five seats are set at the front of the room (the fishbowl), the presenter takes a seat, and the audience is asked to fill out the remaining seats, leaving one empty. Only those seated in the fishbowl can talk.
The first question is read, the fishbowl responds, and anyone from the audience can come up to take the empty seat, bumping one of the fishbowlers. After five minutes of riffing on the question, the audience uses a voting system to indicate whether they should continue with this topic, or move on to the next question.
Fight club refers to the joke that if its your first night at DevJam, you have to 'fight' in the fishbowl. Not really actually, but its a good joke to tune people into participating, instead of just consuming in the audience. I wish I had used this for at least a portion of my Android App Dev panel at mobile TC, as its clear then (and was at DevJam) that the audience often has something valuable to contribute.
On a side note - I must say I had thought Refactr had the lock on cool space for User Groups, a good thing since they so graciously host so many. But nothing holds a candle to the tripped out, funky furniture and lighting effects of the DevJam party room. Actually it's Java Jack's party room, but it feels all Hussman. Comfortably held a large crowd and clearly said - this is not your father's user group (or in the words of one host - keep out lame assholes).
