Good summary. There’s enough detail here that other organizers can easily learn from it. Triple bonus points for noticing a problem and taking a concrete action to fix it.
Lively discussions about off-topics eat time and can keep participants out—but also provide casual athmosphere.
If the group is large enough (say, six people or more), then one way to handle this tradeoff is to establish a social norm to encourage splitting into separate conversations when someone is bored. That way, interested people can delve deeply into a topic without worrying that they’ll bore everyone else, and people can break away for off-topic chats when they feel like it.
the planned topic procrastication falling off the table until very late
Good summary. There’s enough detail here that other organizers can easily learn from it. Triple bonus points for noticing a problem and taking a concrete action to fix it.
If the group is large enough (say, six people or more), then one way to handle this tradeoff is to establish a social norm to encourage splitting into separate conversations when someone is bored. That way, interested people can delve deeply into a topic without worrying that they’ll bore everyone else, and people can break away for off-topic chats when they feel like it.
Heh.