Thursday, February 11, 2016

Occupy Wall Street's Clever Communication Hack

When I say Occupy Wall Street you think, hand signals to allow a group to come to consensus, right? Yeah, me neither. But apparently, it's true, the Occupy Movement had a series of gestures to allow groups of protesters to give feedback on a large scale without interrupting the speaker. Combining this with the human microphone and you've got a facility to involve large groups in a decision making process.

Don't believe me? See the hand signals in action here. And here's a cheatsheet to print out and refer to until you've got them mastered:

The part of me that loves an elegant, low tech solution, thinks this idea is downright awesome. The rest of me finds this pretty cringe worthy. I'd love to meet the Tea Party protester who remarks, "this movement is alright and all, but what it really needs is a way to find consensus as a group."

Still, a clever hack is a clever hack, even if I don't fully get its purpose.

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