VisualsSpeak blog

Day 2 concurrent sessions at North American Simulations and Gaming Association

The second day began with Yael Schy using Improv to explain systems change. We’re all facing organizational change on a continual basis, so she told us about how we can encourage people to become more flexible. We then got to watch audience members in Improv Action. My favorite was the demo at the end where four people got up and took turns leading each other through a variety of dance explorations (more like getting each other to do strange but wonderful things).

Morning sessions

Access the Magic Through Photographs

I presented a session with Peggy Pusch, which I will be writing a post about soon. Peggy left for Cyprus two days after our presentation, and I can’t open the file she left for me with all the notes from our session. So after Peggy returns and I get another file, you’ll get to see and hear about all the great things we discovered together.

Creating Unbeatable Volunteers

I really wanted to clone myself so I could also attend Matt DeMarco and Margee Wolf’s session Make it Magnetic: How to Attract and Keep Unbeatable Volunteers. I do a lot of work with professional associations, so I know what it is like to work with groups of volunteers. As a newcomer to NASAGA and a volunteer in the form of a presenter, I was warmly welcomed by Matt. He made sure I had what I needed, knew where my room was, and he told me what to expect when I got there. He checked in with me again after my session to see how it went.

The game helps people to realize it is these seemingly little things that make a big difference to volunteers. Set up as a board game, designed for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the gameplay is designed to show both the helpful and not helpful behaviors coordinators can use with their volunteer workforces. I heard Matt talk about the possibility of creating a version of the game for a more general audience. Matt, DO IT. Most every organization that utilizes volunteers needs help with this!

Afternoon Sessions

Understanding Systems Thinking through Interactive Games

Ron Roberts from Action Centered Training, Inc shared a new game he has designed that helped us explore competitive versus collaborative gaming. It’s a slide checker game, where the rows on the board slid, and there were four teams with checkers. A triangular die controlled the movement of the checkers, and a square die controlled the movement of the board.

In the first round we were in four teams of two playing competitively. I was really lucky to be matched with a math wiz, since I don’t think quickly enough to play a game like this well. We were able to not only play for the benefit of our own team, but to create set-backs for the others. Because the board pieces could slide each term, you couldn’t really strategize ahead of time. You had to come up with a solution in the moment of your turn. One team won after 20 minutes or so.

In the next round we played cooperatively. This was much more fun. We worked together to get all the pieces off the board, which we did in a little over half the amount of time.

A couple of things were interesting in this process. Three out of the four groups accomplished the task faster working cooperatively. The other group suffered from analysis paralysis in the cooperative round.

I was also really interested to see how the people at my table were able to switch from competitive to cooperative almost instantly. Even though it took a totally different strategy, they could shift their behavior in a moment. I suspect this is a result of playing a lot of games, but it’s also a skill that is very helpful in cross-cultural communication. It got me thinking about the value of adding games to some of the cultural training programs I do.

Another thing I greatly appreciated was although Ron is a college professor and very much wanted to share the theoretical understanding of our experience, he was very realistic about the NASAGA audience. He knew people just wanted to play the game, and kept his slides to a minimum. At the same time, he had detailed handouts for those of us who were interested in them.

Hammer it Home: A Metaphorical Toolbox for Trainers

Brian Remer from the Firefly Group facilitated a session using three different ways to engage participants through metaphor. Each table had a stack of index cards. Every person was asked to list one idea per card to answer what makes learning magic? After gathering a healthy stack, Brain redistributed them so each person had three. We ranked them by how much we liked them, then walked around the room trying to trade for ones we liked better. After returning to our tables, we then worked as a group to identify the three ideas we liked best from all of our options.

During the next segment, each of the three table groups in the room focused on learning one technique and demonstrating to the rest of the groups. We all focused on displaying the themes from the first exercise.

My group received a bag of disparate props, which had to be used for something other than what they were designed, in a skit. Every prop and every person had to be a part of it. We got there, but it really stretched our abilities to make connections and associations.

Another group got to select from a whole table full of objects which would represent the concepts they discovered about the magic of learning. The third group did a similar thing, but used comics as the vehicle for association.

Brain created a great handout for the session which includes much better and more detailed descriptions of these activities, as well as a number of others. It also includes worksheets for exploring why you might use metaphor, when to incorporate it, cautions in using it, and ranges to consider in the strategic use. The packet finishes up with a bibliography and resource suggestions. You can download this handout from the Firefly Group site.

Other posts about the conference:

NASAGA 2007: Pictures everywhere, NASAGA 2007: Games, games everywhere , Game night at NASAGA 07 nasaga2007