This Dojo community meeting was held on Sunday, Dec 15. 

It was a delight having the chance to visit at length with Dojo members Jon Lee, Herbert Molano, Colee Wilkinson and Brent Holley. 

The videos are available here in our Podia site under the Dojo Community Meetings "product", but the link below, with the videos embedded on a Notion page, has the videos and arguably has better organization. 

Visit the Dojo Meeting #4 Page (Notion) -- this is a public web page.

Discussion Topic

The circulated discussion topic was about using various tools to help reach, communicate with and influence an audience. 

In this respect it highlights the fact that all forms of communication and influence have a "marketing and branding" dimension to them. The main differences stem from the goals rather than the methods. 

If your goal is to influence people's consumer choices, that's very close to traditional marketing. 

If your goal is to influence people's beliefs, values and decisions on issues that you care about, we don't normally call that marketing, but much of the psychology, strategy and tools will carry over, especially if you're using the internet to reach your audience.

It makes sense, then, to learn something about how digital and online tools can be used to identify and communicate with your audience. 

Takeaways

Here are a few thoughts that have been stimulated by this, and previous, Dojo meetings:

1. Everyone's Story is Unique

Obviously true, but it's brought home when you listen to individuals tell their stories and what motivated them to take an interest in the Argument Ninja skills and concepts that we talk about here.

There are general critical thinking skills of course, but I've often said that critical thinking is always ABOUT something ... an objective, a project, a subject matter, a context, etc. These objectives and projects differ for different people with different backgrounds, experiences, aptitudes and preferences. That means that the critical thinking and persuasion skills that people need to develop will be specific to each person.

The specificity of skill development poses an instructional design challenge for programs that attempt to build these skills in individuals, at scale (i.e. to teach growing numbers of people at once). 

What I look for in these one-on-one exchanges, and in following the development of individual cases, is insight into how to meet this instructional design challenge. 

Because I know one thing for sure: if you don't understand how people learn these skills as individuals, you won't understand how to teach them to groups. 

2. Everyone's Story is Common

Everyone's story is unique, but everyone's story also has elements that are shared with others. As we add more individual data points, recurring patterns will emerge. 

These patterns are the raw data around which general curriculum and general skills can be organized. 

3. Adding a Layer of Discussion and Engagement Opportunities ... That Scales

These meetings are opportunities for discussion and engagement. But our goal is to provide such opportunities for everyone who wants them.

What happens when we have 20 people showing up rather than four or five?

What happens when we have 20 groups of four or five who have shared interests and want to meet up?

It's clear that I can't participate in all of these meetings. Any solution that scales will be one that allows for Dojo members to organize semi-autonomously.

But groups require leadership, management and moderation as well.

How do we provide an increasing number of such discussion opportunities, to increasing numbers of members, while also maintaining a structure that keeps the discussion on track and productive?

This is a way of framing the "community engagement  challenge" for the Argument Ninja Dojo. 

In 2020 we'll be trying out a variety of community meeting experiments to get feedback on strategies that are promising. 

4. Technological Innovations Will Change Everything

The instructional design and community engagement challenges raised here will be strongly affected by emerging technologies that will enable individuals to create content, create spaces for communication, and document and share their experiences and insights with whomever they wish. 

I talk a bit about this toward the end of the meeting.