Last week, I attended my first Agile New England meeting, partially for the networking opportunity and partially for the topic, which was Gamestorming with Todd Williams from Dachis Group (XPlane). Gamestorming is the title of Dave Gray's book on (and approach to) brainstorming.
I wasn't sure what to expect or what direction Todd Williams was going to take the show, given the possibilities. But he opened up talking about meetings and how much fun most people don't have in them - always good for some laughs. Then he took us down a direction as to why that might be. Do the organizers know why they are there? Have they invited the right people? Do they know what is on the minds of the key decision makers?
He also introduced an idea that made me sit up and take notice because of its familiarity. He talked about diverging and converging. Ahah! This was something Barbara Kivovitz had talked about at the KM Forum symposium in December 2010. The Gamestorming approach is similar to what I heard then. In the table demos we did, these ideas expanded beyond straightforward brainstorming to be applied in many instances - from who to invite to the meeting to asking ourselves what is on the mind of the stakeholders.