Talking stick...an amazing tool!

One thing that has positively surprised me about our community development is the use of the talking stick in our on-line meetings. In the beginning we had an actual stick, we tried a prayer wheel and a sparkler which we rezzed (made appear in our hand) when it was our turn, and it went round the group clockwise. We sat in a circle. We could only talk when the stick was in our hands, so to speak.

When we started this, it was just me explaining patiently ”pass the stick to the person on your left”. All of the questions came up. ”Why cannot I answer that question directly?” ”When can we discuss this?” ”Why does everybody have to speak?” ”Why use the stick anyway?”

We also had some difficulty in SL’s instant messaging knowing what to write. Nowadays we write something like: ”passes stick to Cal” although  maybe one day we will find a way that uses less keyboard tapping like “<” or “>”.

Some interesting observations, my own reactions included:

• People do not seem in general to be used to listening to each other. But it is so worth it. One round or two of the stick brings up the most diverse aspects of a situation and gives a good idea of where someone is coming from.
• Once you introduce the talking stick idea, people like it. Now there are several meeting conveners who are comfortable starting off meetings like it.
• It completely changes the feeling of the meeting to one of focus. I have rarely experienced such a feeling in online meetings. You feel everyone is THERE.
• It is not hard to see practically how the stick can be used at different stages of a meeting:

1)      To get started off.

2)      To hear everyone’s ideas on a problem.

3)      To ensure everyone’s reaction to a proposal is noted.

• All the convener needs to do is to type “I propose we take a round with the stick on this. Any objections? OK <.”
• I thought that we all had a long way to go before our community was able to make consensus decisions, that we would need all kinds of training and that we would all fall out many times before it started to be part of our culture. Maybe this WILL come, but for now I just love these people and the feeling we have created in this virtual world.