We have not been having it.

19 minutes and 25 seconds.

[direct download]

After several months meeting, the Irish Language night has been facing a series of issues due to an unideal location and a temporary spell of absence of our fluent speaker.

TQ: Road Map
Looking for material to add to the road map without the input of the fluent speaker and the need for verification.

TQ: Set-Up
Adding additional props to the set-up and the need to limit certain objects in certain languages.

TQ; Wave
A new technique to deal with a small conversation group with individuals of different language levels. An immersion in more advanced conversation.

TQ: Lunatic Fringe
Using Lunatic Fringe as a way of being immersed in more advanced language while avoiding being “Sorry Charlied” by not being forced into a response.

TQ: Road Map
Covering new ground and figuring out the details of new grammatical structures. Keeping in mind upcoming players with less experience in the language while designing the next steps on the language road map.

TQ: We’ll All Get There Together
Community organizing and the importance of finding more people to join the game to build a community of language speakers.

TQ: Set-Up
Potential ideas for coming up with set-ups for Irish night to attract more people and/or reframe the goals.

Written by Evan Gardner

4 Comments

John Graham

I want to throw technique “No Grief Debrief” here – you guys are making the game so much better by sharing these debriefs through a time of struggle. I find it encouraging – thank you!

I wonder if it’s worth exploring what techniques might be particularly useful to throw, in order to keep the “no-grief” nature of debriefs going, when morale is starting to dip and the “how fascinating”s are starting to get a little strained.

Perhaps one is Tq “it’s a combination martial art / fringe science” – a little reframe from “luck – we are not having it”, to “growth happens at the edge – and we are at it”. Techniques appear at the edge?

Another might be Tq “Focus on the game”, or Tq “Game night”, or might I propose Technique(?)”Game on!”. I’m getting curious about some of the questions not asked here. We heard about different motivations for getting to Irish night – what about, who’s coming to *game* night? Who’s in it for the game? Where is everyone at on the WAYK game proficiency scale? Any Sorry-charlieing happening in terms of the game?
Any core techniques I need to develop a deeper level of mastery of? What’s the next Tq”Bite-sized piece” towards getting everyone up to the aha moment of ‘getting it’ that a deeply multilingual world is the best bet (and the most fun) for reviving Irish?

Another new technique might be “ (Seth Godin)

Getting more speculative – there’s a sense in this debrief of being, like most of us, a little far from Evan, who it’s easy to start looking to as the “Jedi Master” of WAYK (hehe). It reminds me of when Willem was a little worried about what if he and Evan suddenly died, or “looked in the big bag”. So maybe we need a Tq(?)”Obi Evan Kenobi”? 😀

Willem

John,

No worries – Irish night morale is still chugging along despite any speedbumps. It’s true though that when things get really rough the “How Fascinatings” can get a bit strained – this is an open area for innovation, and some form of “Focus on the Game” may be an important reframe for players. We’re continuing to experiment! An additional challenge of Irish Night, that I don’t think we mention in the podcasts, is it’s only an hour long. This has stretched out the learning curve for many of the new players.

Though Evan is the founder, we’re fortunate to have an array of players that are steadily becoming a peer group for Advanced/Superior play. This is one of our foci for the next year, making this Advanced/Superior play group even stronger. So we expect to see several Jedi Masters hunting language in the months to come!

Comments are closed.