It was a smaller turnout than the last several sessions but, still enough for a solid team of 7. This could be because we tried it on a Wednesday and even more so because it was at the first of the month. In Seattle, there is always so much going on that its almost impossible to find an evening that works great. Kevin hosted at http://officenomads.com/ on Capitol Hill. The breakdown is as follows. Spontaneous Theme + Pitch (16 ideas)

Process to generate the theme

Use this process to find a theme to brainstorm on.

1. At the idea sprint, go around the group and asked everyone to suggest 1-2 themes.
2. These were all written on a white-board
3. Everyone gets 2 votes and made a mark next to the themes they liked best.
4. The theme on the board with the most marks won.

For the exercises

1. The group chose 2 themes using the voting process.
2. Everyone then wrote down 3 words that are related to those themes
3. These words were each written on a note card.  This was collected and formed a deck of cards.
4. We then passed the deck around.  Each person took 2 cards, so they had 2 words on it
5. They then tried to make up an idea based on those words.
6. It was advised to come up with the worst idea possible.  Then others tried to help

Notes about this process

• We had 2 themes this time.  This seemed to help from getting stuck on a super hard theme.
• It would be good to have a different color note card for the “key words”
• I’m considering a small 3 minute hourglass timer to pass around.  That way we don’t get too hung up on one idea

We had a strong turnout of 17 people at http://www.thelaunchspace.org/. This was great because we were also finally able to have 2 groups working independently. The space worked well because Tyler, our host, could provide several break out rooms. These are things we tried differently since the last time.

• We didn’t type in the ideas between rounds. I still need to count but, we might have up to 200 this time. Maybe I need to get some helpers that can help me add these to the system
• We went out for beer to conclude and let people decompress. It was something that was missing from the previous events.
• The name tags were super handy. I forget names so easily that it was a simple innovation to add
• Writing down the rules, and processes as handouts  for everyone might be good to help explain the activities. Maybe even some diagrams
• We used note cards instead of post it notes. This worked fine
• I had them put the note cards into an envelope with the ideas on it. This was a good idea for keeping things organized. Perhaps next time we can use 2 envelopes per table so we can get a count of how each group did
• We shuffled the group between exercise so people had a chance to meet with others. I like this practice.

The following are the two mental exercises that we tried with notes about how they went.

Conclusions

I notices that in total we had about 80 ideas for 2 groups. This is about half of what we were seeing before. This makes sense with the first exercise where the point was to stick to a topic and not generate as many ideas. I was surprised that we had so many less ideas on exercise 2. This was a variant of the solution telephone game but, seemed to generate half the ideas. Also the ideas didn’t vary as much as I thought.
I do think that one large problem was communication. So on the next night I really want to have a handout to show some examples of themes and ideas so that people will know more of what we are looking for or how things work.

It was another good solid night of 8 people. In the group we had 4 veterans and 4 new people. This time we were able to generate 72 ideas which beats the last session of 67 ideas. 30 of these were generated with exercise 1 and the other 42 came from exercise 2.

We stuck to the format that we had come up with last time.

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

This proves to be the best format for the event and I think we will be continuing with it in the future.

Exercise 1 : Datafeed Show and Tell : 30 ideas

This exercise was suppose to play off of the idea of mashups. These are the simple easy startups that are created by hooking two or more services together. This was the homework

Homework

For this round I would like for you to have 2 sources of interesting data/information. If you are a techie this might be a data feed, or something that you can mashup. For instance look at the possiblities on these sites

• http://sites.google.com/site/litapreconf2009/mashup-data-sources
• http://www5.kingcounty.gov/gisdataportal/

If you are not a techie maybe there is a website of interesting data, or something you know about that most people wouldn’t be aware of. At any case, be prepared to explain

1. What the data is
2. Where you get it
3. Something you could do with it.

For the exercise, we went around the circle and I had each person talk about their data source. Then gave everyone a moment to talk about what you could do with it.

Observations.

We went too slow. It also ran too long. In about 50 minutes we only got around the table once.

I think no one really did the homework. So homework really should be able to be made up on the spot

This was good for getting people talking and contributing, a warmup, but it really turned peoples focus to wondering what they would say when it was their turn. I think that sort of keeps people from being creative.

8 people is perfect. With 10 in a circle this could take a long time to get all the way around.

Maybe I should have used a timer to keep things moving. A timer is unbiases and makes it easier to interrupt to keep the conversation going.

It would be good if the timer was very visible. That way people could govern how much time was spent talking about each idea. As it was, sometimes we would only talk about one idea.

Exercise 2: Idea Handoff : 42 ideas

This was the same exercise I used on Feb 15. It proves to be excellent at getting people talking and generating a wild variety of ideas. Here are a couple quick observations.

• It takes on the feel of a party game.
• We went for 7 rounds so that the idea you put into the group would end up next to you.
• Most strong ideas stayed with the theme, and some even came out the other side pretty much in-tact
• The weaker ideas mutated until they became stronger
• By the 7th round your mind had turned to Jello and it was pretty hard to remember what you were talking about
• Make sure you have a loud timer. I left the oven timer somewhere and had to use my iPhone. The duck alarm was good but, it wasn’t loud enough.

Whats next?

Next I want to get this bigger. We have enough veterans and regulars to split this into 2 or 3 tables worth of people. But, I think that we might need a bigger space. So if someone wants to volunteer their space, please contact me.

Heres the bigger thing. Now we have something like 140 idea sparks from the last 2 idea sprints. Many of these caught peoples attention but, they are just the beginning of ideas. Generally at the Idea Sprints we are focusing on the volume of ideas that can be produces. We try to reserve critisim until later. We need somewhere to put these ideas so people can judge them, and add onto them. So we are building a quick Ruby application to try out some concepts. After we have a prototype I will open it up for the mailing list to let some people try it out and give us feedback. I know that I would love some where to dump crazy ideas as they come to me. So maybe we will throw together a quick iPhone and android app to allow for this.

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