Skype Analysis

We had another skype session Sunday. The morning session discussed analysis, and then we put together a definition for it. I hear the evening session discussed creativity, which sounds really fascinating! I'm going a bit meta here and analyzing the skypes themselves rather than analysis itself.

It's been quite interesting these last two sessions, as I've always been a part of the evening (UK time) sessions. Now due to scheduling I'm participating in the morning ones (aka middle of the night my time). It's been great to talk to people I didn't get a chance to before, but I also really miss talking to those who usually attend the evening sessions. The feeling is really different between the two skypes. There are usually lots of people on the evening call and hardly any in the morning. Before I rarely got a word in edgewise, and now I'm doing a significant portion of the talking. It seems like the golden amount of people is in that 5-7 range. If it's fewer, the discussion gets pressed into a specific concept and loses the lovely bouncing around of ideas that the bigger sessions have. But the bigger sessions, when too big, there just isn't enough time for everyone to speak.

I would love to return to everyone bringing their own conversation topic and probing deeper into those; I really miss that from the big sessions. But it would also be a really interesting experiment if instead of molding the conversation into something specific, we students picked one concept out of what we bring and just ran with it. Once people get really into the discussion, they tend to keep it going, but if it gets redirected, sometimes the conversation stalls out. That carries its own risks, but it might be interesting to see what happens.

I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts. Have you switched back and forth between evening and morning? If so, what differences have you noticed?