The large room problem

People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world.”

Kim Culbertson

I don't think anyone ever had a breakthrough idea in a meeting room. I've always found meeting rooms a Petrie dish for safe mediocrity. There are twenty-eight different communication channels in a room of eight people; in a room of twenty, one hundred and ninety. In a conference of three hundred, just under ninety thousand. The exponential is clear - the more people, the more latent potential but, the greater the tendency toward groupthink and mediocrity in practice. 

During this last year and a bit, I've experienced meetings in possibly the largest meeting room in the world, a.k.a Zoom. I've been in calls from four to over a thousand people, over several hundred meetings. Whilst my observations would not meet scientific research criteria, I'm grateful for what I've learned. Dialogue needs four people to appear and quickly die…