More action and accountability after ScienceOnline

Originally published on Kapuno in the Sandbox community

I was speaking to several people, including @scicurious, about the fact that the sessions did an incredible job at surfacing problems and integrating perspectives; but didn’t necessarily convert problems to action.

I think some sessions don’t require solutions so there should be “Action” and “Discussion” sessions. Would be helpful for me if the title was prefixed so I can understand whether they’re getting in to a more theoretical or high-level discussion or are hoping to come to some actionable end. From a scheduling perspective, it would be helpful if the action sessions were on the first days so the members would have time to build consensus and find help in the community.

What’s an “Action Session”?

An “Action Session” is a session where the moderators have a prompt or problem which they believe can be solved or assuaged by the focused action of some set of persistant members. The leaders should define the problem that we’re trying to solve and the goal of the session is to get next steps and assign those to people before the conference disbands.

Breaking Action Sessions Down

1. Every session has a poster with a single question that they plan to answer with next steps by the end of the session.

2. Each session, beyond discussing the general topic, should result in action items and task owners. Task owners don’t necessarily have to attend the session but there must be owners before the conference exits.

3. After each session, the poster and action items are hung in a main room, with a distinct hash-tag or URL of the session wiki. This will allow people who want to help to state that they wish to help with task X. The moderator(s) and action owners are responsible for managing the groups.

4. Action owners can use the remainder of the conference to build support for their task.

5. After the conference, each session puts up a summary page on a wiki or on their blog defining the action group.

6. Over the coming months and year, the group should report progress to the community (#scioX) as they knock off action items and need help from the broader membership.

Closing the Loop

Before the start of the next year’s conference sessions there could be an hour session where the prior years moderators (or someone they choose to represent them) could present (in 5 minutes) the problem they tried to solve, their successes, failures and what could be improved.

It’s amazing to think that the experience could be any better. But, as I’m sure we’d all agree, we can always work smarter. Looking forward to any feedback!