Facilitation:Crowdsourcing Spectrogram Statements

A compelling way to generate Spectrogram statements is to "crowdsource" them from participants at the event.

Inform participation they are going to design statements. They need to find 4 other people they don't know (form groups of 5) and use these design guidelines:

1) Keep it short and memorable. The longer the statement is, the harder it is to replay in your head. "Wikileaks is good for humanity" is a really tight, memorable statement.

2) Make it extreme and polarizing: "life is ok" is short and memorable, but not very compelling". "You should never use corporate software" is definitely a tad more likely to engender debate

3) Make it inclusive: it needs to be a statement everyone can relate to. "It is more fun to party with Noam Chomsky than to party with Andrew Cockburn" is only relevant for those who have partied with both.

Then explain it is a 10-minute, "more is more" brainstorm: each group should generate 5-10 statements, each on a separate post-it note.

Then at the end of 10 minutes, they should pick their best, most extreme one, and a backup, in case someone else does a similar one to their #1.

Then ask who wants to go first, invite them to read their statement slow and loud a couple of times.

Do one spectrogram, rinse and repeat.

And for groups who don't get to play their #1 statement, have those read off at the end to honor the work done.