From a short internal GGW note --
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Did you ever hear about "bystander apathy"?
It's a seemingly terrible thing where, if you call out for help to a large group of people, everyone freezes and no-one moves. There's been a number of psychological studies mentioning this, as well as examples of people being assaulted or even murdered, calling for help, and no-one stepping in.
The solution, they found, was to a single out one specific individual. So if you call out, "I'm having a heart attack, someone call 9-1-1!" -- very likely nothing will happen. But if you point at someone and say, "You, in the blue shirt, I'm having a heart attack. Can you call 9-1-1?" -- then they'll almost certainly do it.
My thinking -- and I think GGW needs to evolve along these lines -- is to move towards asking individuals who might be interested if they want to do it. That would mean specifically reaching out first to, say, Chris Dame, and then to Zach, and then to Paulo, and then to Dan, and then to me. (Or whatever order.) Feel free to lean on me for anything in particular if nobody else can pick up the slack of course, but definitely give opportunities for others to get involved on these before you come to me.
What do you think? My thinking is that's the best way to go forwards volunteering. If you want to recruit someone for a role, then you ask individuals specifically, 1-on-1, over Skype, email, or on a call. Your thoughts?
Sebastian
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As the group of people collaborating on GGW gets larger, a challenge is coordinating people working together. Now, it's quite common for someone to say, "X person is going to do a GGW deal, can someone jump in with Y specific element to help?"
It's something that almost everyone would be happy to help with, but often these "emails to everyone" wouldn't get a reply and things would stay in limbo for a few days before being sorted out.
That's not because people don't care, but because of human nature. If you're trying to collaborate across a large number of people -- for a civic or charitable project, for a new business initiative inside a company, or anything along those lines -- broad requests to the whole group will have a lower success rate than thinking through who is the most logical person to ask, and asking them.
So we're moving roughly in that direction. We're also putting together a training, mentoring, and credentialing system so people can know who is working on what, and can get good guidance/mentoring while working on their first things at GGW.
Do bear this in mind with future group projects of your own -- if you want a hand, single out a particular individual to ask first.