I hosted an online-party using zoom breakout rooms a few weeks ago and ran into similar problems.
Half-way through the party I noticed people were clustering in suboptimal size conversations and bringing high-context conversations to a stop, so I actually brought everybody backed to the lobby then randomly assigned them to groups of 2 or 3 - and when I checked 10 minutes later everyone was in the same two rooms again with groups of 8 − 10 people.
AFAICT this was status/feelings driven—there were a few people at the party who were either existing high-status to the participants, or who were very charismatic, and everyone wanted to be in the same conversation as them.
I think norm-setting around this is very hard, because it’s natural to want to be around high-status and charismatic people, and it’s also natural to want to participate in a conversation you’re listening to.
I’m going to try to add your suggestions to the top of the shared google doc next time I host one of these and see how it goes.
Agreed with the status/feelings cause. And I’m not 100% sure the solution is “prevent people from doing the thing they instinctively want to do” (especially “all the time.”)
My current guess is “let people crowd around the charismatic/and/or/interesting people, but treat it more like a panel discussion or fireside chat, like you might have at a conference, where mostly 2-3 people are talking and everyone else is more formally ‘audience.’”
But doing that all the time would also be kinda bad in different ways.
In this case… you might actually be able to fix this with technology? Can you literally put room-caps on the rooms, so if someone wants to be the 4th or 6th person in a room they… just… can’t?
I hosted an online-party using zoom breakout rooms a few weeks ago and ran into similar problems.
Half-way through the party I noticed people were clustering in suboptimal size conversations and bringing high-context conversations to a stop, so I actually brought everybody backed to the lobby then randomly assigned them to groups of 2 or 3 - and when I checked 10 minutes later everyone was in the same two rooms again with groups of 8 − 10 people.
AFAICT this was status/feelings driven—there were a few people at the party who were either existing high-status to the participants, or who were very charismatic, and everyone wanted to be in the same conversation as them.
I think norm-setting around this is very hard, because it’s natural to want to be around high-status and charismatic people, and it’s also natural to want to participate in a conversation you’re listening to.
I’m going to try to add your suggestions to the top of the shared google doc next time I host one of these and see how it goes.
Agreed with the status/feelings cause. And I’m not 100% sure the solution is “prevent people from doing the thing they instinctively want to do” (especially “all the time.”)
My current guess is “let people crowd around the charismatic/and/or/interesting people, but treat it more like a panel discussion or fireside chat, like you might have at a conference, where mostly 2-3 people are talking and everyone else is more formally ‘audience.’”
But doing that all the time would also be kinda bad in different ways.
In this case… you might actually be able to fix this with technology? Can you literally put room-caps on the rooms, so if someone wants to be the 4th or 6th person in a room they… just… can’t?