Ditch the Talks! The Living Schedule for a different kind of academic workshopping

(This blog post is only possible because the cool people at the International Network of Economic Method believed in and funded this workshop, so credit to them!)

If you have spent any amount of time in academia, you know the drill - at workshops and conferences, we give each other talks. At least that’s what I mostly know from my personal field, philosophy of science. Talks are great. But talks are not always the best way to share and discuss ideas, to understand and engage with arguments, to get to know people and their work, or to form communities. There is a saying that the most important things happen between the talks, in the coffee breaks. And the saying is kind of right.

For a recent workshop I co-organised with Anna-Katharina Kothe, PhD candidate in economics, we tried something different. What we essentially wanted was to have ONLY the coffee breaks, and none of the talks. Because this experiment exceeded all our expectations, I’d like to share some details of what we did for those who organise similar workshops and have ever found themselves frustrated during the fifth talk of the day, which could have been an engaging conversation instead.

Talks up Front

The first main idea was to have the talks up front, before we meet, in a succession of shorter online sessions. That way, people could share their current work and get an idea of what others are doing as well as what their background is. Also, that way, we saved more of the precious time we had in person, which ultimately the thing that costs a lot of money (travel, hotels, time, etc.). So when we finally met, everybody already kind of knew each other from 4x 90 minutes on Zoom. They all came already loaded-up with follow-up questions, comments, counterarguments to what they heard online.

Living Schedule

The second main idea was the „Living Schedule“. We already gave each other the talks, so what now? The Living Schedule starts minimalistically, just with empty slots that define the timing for a check-in in the morning, for a set of working sessions, and breaks (important, often underestimated). In the morning check-in, then, attendees fill in the content of those working sessions of the day together, during a moderated group conversation. Someone pitches an idea of what they would like to do or discuss, and a moderator puts it on the schedule for the desired slot (or to a backlog first). Others can tap in and follow that idea, or pitch something completely different that can happen in a different slot, or in parallel during the same slot.

What exactly do they pitch? Whatever! You’ve invited grown-up and independent researchers, who all have their own research projects, so they do not need to be micromanaged about how to spend their time - that is, if you create the right and encouraging environment. In a working session, they could discuss a particular paper, test out a new idea they had, have a little writing retreat on their own or with others, share a draft, come up with a new model, browse through a dataset together that interests them, and more. 

There are three main rules for the Living Schedule to work

• • Attendees have to make it public on the living schedule what they plan to do (and possibly with whom initially). Ideally, this happens in one of the check-ins, but if the plans change throughout the day, thats ok and good. Just have it be known.
  • Adhere to the slots and breaks as much as possible. Breaks are important to sustain overall morale, and adhering to the timing allows others to plan to join your sessions. (Of course, the group could also decide to change the timing of the slots, which also happened in our case)
  • At the end of the day, share your status, mood, and ideas in the  check-out. This is great for community building, and to understand what the others did, as well as to come up with new ideas of what could be done on the next day.

There are a few major benefits that this kind of collaborative setting can have. If people get bored or don't like what's on the schedule, they are encouraged to put something on that interests them instead. There’s a good chance others feel the same and are glad to have a choice. Also, because people can pitch whatever, there is a lot of variety in the modes of interaction - yes, there could be the occasional talk (great!), but it’s unlikely it will be five in a row (even better!). If this is the encouraged behaviour and communicated goal of the workshop, its harder to hurt someone's feeling while still discussing what people want to discuss.

Admittedly, this hands-off approach was a little scary, at first. What if everyone hated it? What if this would result in three days of awkward silence? That anxiety turned out to be unwarranted. The whole experience was extremely refreshing, and I’ve never witnessed so many research questions, concrete paper projects, and collaboration ideas emerge in such a short amount of time from a group of researchers who essentially were strangers before they met. 

Some practical remarks in case you’d like to try the same

Scope - Scope the workshop to a topic that is neither too broad nor too narrow. Remember, you are encouraging people to do whatever, so if that whatever is to interest others, the group should generally work on and be interested in similar things. Our scope was on non-epistemic value decisions in economic modelling, which happened to be appealing to philosophers and economists. That was quite specific but also left room for interesting tangents that came up.

Expectation Setting - if you do this, nobody will have heard about your little innovative idea of workshopping. Explain to attendees what the plan is and what the rules are, why the idea excites you, and what is in it for everyone. Once it made click for everyone in our workshop, people could get used to this different mode, and liked to contribute.

Materials - Pin boards + moderation cards are great for doing the interactive scheduling, but you can use whatever works, really, as long as it its public, malleable, and easily accessible for everyone. Have things like pin boards, flip charts, digital screens around, so people can use whatever they need during the working sessions.

Venue - The venue should allow for parallel sessions to take place, with enough spatial separation so people don’t have to whisper in their group. We were in a big room that had some walls half-way through the room, which provided enough shelter. This way, people could in theory also hop between parrallel sessions without changing the room, although that never happened in our case. 

Size - We did the workshop with fifteen people. More people might make the living scheduling more difficult.  

Snacks! Remember, the whole thing is a continuous coffee break. Have them snacks ready!