The Road to Hyderabad: Lesson #3

Lesson #3 Facilitate a shared, inspiring experience for the group outside the meeting.

For us in Nairobi, that experience was a site visit to Jamii Bora.  Sharing that experience brought the group together in a new way.  Barriers went down, people began speaking more earnestly and personally, and everyone approached the next (and last) day of the meeting with a renewed sense of purpose.

If we could do it all over again, I would have had us visit Jamii Bora even earlier in the schedule than we did.  It was a lesson learned that we are applying to the Tech 4 Society gathering in Hyderabad where we will have a site visit on the first day rather than on the second as we did in Nairobi.

A site visit not only provides a powerful bonding experience for the participants, but, when done the right way, it can change perspectives and prfoundly shift the way people engage for the rest of the meeting.  For the first day and a half of our Nairobi gathering on Mobile Tech we focused (not surprisingly) on the techiness of mobile tech, of the technological possibilities.  After visiting Ingrid though, there was a very noticeable shift in the way everyone talked about the topic.  Suddenly we weren't talking about technology, we were talking about people and how technology could serve them better.  And like that, we had some of the most productive conversations and agreements from the whole 3 day event.

Click here to check out The Road to Hyderabad series.

photo by: flickr/swatzo