Hi All,
I am really loving the book so far and so thankful to Alex and for the group participating that it got me going on reading through this.
I’m posting here to try to get a discussion going about how we might structure this group in a way that would be most productive. It seems like an online book club has a lot of potential, but also a lot of challenges if it’s going to be more than just a bunch of people independently reading the same book. Great, perhaps, that we’re starting with this particular book as a way to get ideas. This isn’t a criticism, but really a hope for great solutions since I think this has a lot of potential that we’re not reaching yet.
Two particular constructive suggestions from me:
1. I’d like better incentives (for myself and for participants in the group as a whole) to keep us all up to speed on the readings.
I’ve been behind from the first week and unable to catch up, and judging from the activity of others I’m not the only one. For me at least, this means I’m never ready to participate in the discussions we could be having. I’m not sure how big a difference it would make if we were all caught up, but I suspect it’s a pretty essential first step: just the fact of having other folks actively engaged in the “club” would give me motivation to stay engaged myself.
What might be some good ways to incentivize ourselves and participants of the group as a whole to keep up? Or does the idea of pressure to keep up seem bad to you?
One suggestion I’d have, given my own busy life, is to lower the reading load. I could do a chapter a week. Four chapters full of ideas is probably always going to be too much for me. But maybe that just means I’m not ready for a book club. See next comment for another possibility.
2. I’d like an improved system for interaction and discussion.
Even if I were caught up, I am not really sure how best to use the Google document or this discussion forum to engage, and I suspect I’m not the only one. An immediate benefit, I think, is that it would help incentivize me to keep up, since I’d know that to join the great discussion, I have to do my homework. I don’t mean to put the pressure on Alex for this, and I think we as a group could come up with good norms, but for a next book, I think it might be useful to have more details on suggested best ways to do this, along with some “how’s the club going” group discussion time to improve processes.
Here are a couple suggestions:
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Propose particular discussion topics in this Discourse forum topic and discuss them right here? I’m not familiar enough with Discourse: can we have sub-threads for discussing different topics that people can opt in and out of?
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A weekly Google Hangout discussion as a central part of the club, where we really engage as a group. Anyone could join just to listen, but it would be emphasized that people who talk should be up to speed on the reading. For me that would be a great additional incentive to keep up with the reading, and it would help a lot in giving the “club” aspect of this group meaning and value.
Thoughts? Objections? Suggestions? Or am I the only one who would like to have this discussion?