Brussels / 4 & 5 February 2017

schedule

Closing loops

Concluding discussions in non-face-to-face communities


How do we decide when a discussion is complete? How do we know we've heard from enough people, or that the topic isn't dead yet? Deciding how to take decisions in a community is hard - in this talk, I'd like to ways to handle it.

Figuring out when to close a discussion is really hard - and more so if all the participants are only using forums/mailinglists/chat rather than being face-to-face. Knowing that you've heard from the right people, trying to ensure quiet voices are heard, and making sure you're not cutting the discussion too early (or too late) really matters. In this "talk" I'd like to bring some examples of such discussions from our community (e.g. things which caused conflict, things which caused communications blocks, and so on), talk about how we handled them, and discuss ways in which we could improve - hopefully to the benefit of everyone present.

Speakers

Greg Sutcliffe

Links