After a long hiatus the SeattleThinkTank is now back up and running. We have shifted our focus slightly to work on the process of idea creation and less on creating projects. This is not to say that none of these ideas will become open source projects, companies and non-profits. It just isn’t the focus of this organization.

Our most recent meeting was on Feb 15th and was an experiment in performing “Idea Sprints”. The purpose of these sprints is to maximize the number of ideas generate during the meeting. They all must be recorded before the end of the meeting and no one goes home with homework. We had a good sized group of 8 and within a 2 hour period we generated 67 ideas.

For this sprint we had a table in the middle of the group and everyone had a stack of (3×5) post-it notes. When they had an idea to record they wrote the idea name/tagline/description. Later this was reduced to just name/description. The tagline seemed unnecessary and was slowing people down. By the end of the exercise the pile of post-its had grown pretty large so we decided to record ideas during the break so that we didn’t have to do it all at the very end.

The format was as follows

Before the meeting

• The meeting was announced 2 weeks before
• A reminder was sent out 3 days before
• A second reminder was sent out on the morning of
• I asked everyone to make a list of complaints and bring that, this was used in Ex1

Idea Sprint Meeting format

• 45 minutes for Exercise 1
• 15 minutes break
• 45 minutes for Exercise 2
• 15 minutes idea dump

Let me explain what some of these things are.

Idea Dump

The recording of all the ideas into an electronic system. In this case we used a Google form that dumped everything to a Google spreadsheet. The process was simple, helpers took a handful of post-its and typed it into the form

Exercises

These are an activity that we use to generate ideas. We are always experimenting with this to find exercises that help us create more ideas, diverse ideas, or explore very particular ideas.

Exercise 1

• Go around the circle and read off a complaint.
• People tried to come up with solutions to the complaint
• At the same time people wrote down any other ideas that came to mind
• We continued and people started coming up with similar complaints

Exercise 2: Idea Handoff

• Turn to the left, you have 5 minutes to tell that person an idea, and that person tells you an idea.
• At 5 minutes an oven timer beeps and everyone take a couple minutes to write down any ideas that came up. This could include your own ideas or what your neighbor told you
• Turn to the right, and verbally pass the first guys idea on.
• If you don’t like the idea, change it until you do.
• Then listen to your neighbor to the left.
• Continue trading and passing ideas like this about 6 times
• By this point there are so many ideas are moving around that its really confusing. But, they merge and mingle and get really interesting.
• To finish the exercise have each person tell one idea they ended up with. This is mostly so people could see how their idea mutated.

Observations

Here are a list of lessons learned and things I noticed.

• In general no one wanted to complain during Ex1. They mostly wanted to solve things or point out cool technologies. It was actually a little hard to keep the focus on complaining.
• Exercises need names. Makes it easier if for people to remember them
• The overall format worked well and we will be reusing it again
• The post-its were a good idea, but, it would be really nice if everyone could type stuff in durning the meeting. The problem here is that if a computer is in front of a person they tend to loose focus on the group and instead focus on other things. So the idea dump might just be a necessary evil.
• It took about 5 min for 3 guys to type in 30 ideas.
• Use the break to type in the first batch of ideas or you will get stuck with a really big pile
• Exercise 1 was more of a warmup but, got people talking and thinking.
• Exercise 2 worked well. It was a little hard to explain. Maybe a visual aid?
• Exercise 2 only works with even numbers of people
• Roughly the same number of ideas were generated in both exercises, but, Excersize 2 created more diverse ideas.
• Instead of complaints ask for problems they see. Problems in their world, in general. Things that bother them.
• Everyone felt a need to have an introduction at the beginning. This makes sense. But, I like the anonymous part. It keeps people from networking until the end. Also you have no idea who you are with and I think that keeps people from holding back. Perhaps just “Hello” badges next time.
• Participants want to hang out and talk afterwords. I think future events should plan for this