Completed
Dec 4: GLAB Team China; NZ Vineyards
Dec 11: GLab Team India
Planned
Feb 27: New Margin Ventures, (early session); Out of Asia (late session) [if teams sign up for this session, they need to work with me to make it fit with the visitor panel discussion]
March 5: Wikipedia (late session); New Margin Ventures (late session); Microfinance (late session); DFGF (early session); Green Fund (early session); 100k (early session)
Please contact Kara to schedule your team for this so that we can make sure that we can fit everyone in
How to plan for your session
Think of the opportunity this way: imagine you're given a slot on the top management team's agenda. it certainly is plausible that it would be very short. In fact, I was talking to someone from Google just the other day, and she told me that they had 5-minute "dig-in" sessions on their agenda which were exactly this format. The task of the presenter is to frame just one issue to share with the group. Here are some of the things that people there use the "dig in" for: sharing new ideas that they think will be generative, provocative, interesting, or useful for the rest of the meeting participants; sharing a piece of new learning that people will want to think about and possibly follow up on later; sharing a specific issue or problem (e.g. in trying to work out a new deal with a potential partner) to get some feedback on; eliciting leads, contacts, or other info in cases when a project seems stalled. So, there is such a thing as a 5-minute session! Going forward, you'll sometimes have to present your current work, and even raise issues, in very short time segments. this puts the burden on you to figure out how to frame the current situation as pithily as possible, and then to figure out how best to elicit ideas, feedback, or other input. This is a chance to give it a try! Other times, you'll have more scope and more time. But there's value in using short sessions like this one, too. You do not have to use the time for full-on brainstorming; it could be an abbreviated form of brainstorming, or it could be to ask for contacts, information, or past experiences from the group. One effective use of time may be to use the session to set up the issue or question you'd like to explore, to get some input from the group then and there, and to set the stage for getting more input from them afterwards. Perhaps you can give everyone a paper form to fill out and hand in at the end of class with at least one suggestion for you. Or perhaps you could ask students for input during the break or right after class in the third-hour clinic. Maybe turn it into a game of sorts ("OK, you have 60 seconds, form pairs, and see how many ideas you can generate. the pair with the most gets a prize!") The time is yours to use as you see fit. Don't feel you must brainstorm; figure out what would be most valuable to you. Maybe you have a case in which you are looking for analogies - and you want the class to generate a list of similar organizations or situations your team could then research for ideas that might apply to your current issues. I think this framing--given an opportunity to present to a group, ask yourselves, what do we want out of this - is a very useful one to perfect your skills in making the most out of every presentation.
5 minutes is short!