SHIFT Events Oy is a network and event organiser that brings together people, companies and ideas. Its annual main event is the SHIFT Business Festival, held for the eighth time in 2023. In this article Jutta Ruusunen, CEO of SHIFT Events Oy, explains how a custom Topaasia SHIFT deck, MindSHIFT, was created for SHIFT 2022, and how it was used as part of a panel discussion to bring dialogue onto the stage.
Earlier experiences were convincing
"I had tried Topaasia's Fake News game before, and the experiences were so good that we wanted SHIFT to have its own MindSHIFT deck too. When we started making the deck, we thought about who the deck is for and what its core content is. We thought it would facilitate the conversations we wanted people to have at SHIFT. After all, SHIFT is not so much a business conference; we want to bring different people and companies together and get them talking. Then we quickly realised this should be taken on stage", Jutta explains the initial spark for creating the MindSHIFT game.
Photographer Brave Teddy, #theshiftfi
The process of creating the MindSHIFT deck
In Jutta's view the deck-building process was, as a whole, fun, fast and effortless. The SHIFT crew played the Leading Together gamewith a team of ten, and this way the game's format became familiar to the group before making their own deck.
"We started making the MindSHIFT game when the festival production was already well under way, which meant we had no time for, say, a full-day workshop. We were in a hurry, and Topaasia's Jussi understood right away that building the deck would have to be done in several half-hour sprints. I myself thought there's no way this can come together this quickly, but every time we really did get a long way", Jutta describes and continues:
"In the remote-work era, making and testing the deck was an inspiring breath of fresh air and also worked from a team-building perspective. I could have made this deck for the sake of that process alone. In the end, the finished game was translated into English and the panel was also run in English."
Photographer Brave Teddy, #theshiftfi
Gamified dialogue and audience participation in the panel discussion
The panel discussion held as part of the SHIFT Business Festival 2022 was called MindSHIFT, and it was run using the MindSHIFT game named after the discussion.
"Once we had the panel line-up together, we did a short test. That was good, because for some panellists taking part without prepared questions can be a completely new concept, and this way the game became familiar to them. For speakers who did not know each other, playing and the cards created a connection and sparked different perspectives. Testing the game also served to introduce the speakers to one another", Jutta says about introducing Topaasia to the panellists.
"When the event came and we got on stage, everything ran smoothly, the conversation flowed and the audience got involved. The audience got to vote and participate through the cards, which showed that they were not just sitting passively in the stands. The discussion had no concrete wrap-up, but that was not the aim either. The programme was a freer conversation, which led to good feedback", Jutta sums up.
Photographer Brave Teddy, #theshiftfi
Traditional moderation vs. Topaasia
According to Jutta, moderating a traditional panel discussion requires focusing on distributing the floor, keeping the conversation focused and reining it in when needed. The game offers the moderator a more flexible and natural way to steer the conversation. Speakers do not need to be interrupted; instead the conversation can be guided and paced, for example, through votes. The progression of the game provides a structure that can also be narrated and shown to the audience during the panel, so the audience stays on top of the whole.
"A panel discussion run with the game depends a lot on the panellists. We had humour and light, good-spirited debate. People disagreed, but without conflict. With the cards, the panellists dared not to seek agreement", Jutta says, and continues on how Topaasia can turn a panel discussion into a genuine place for dialogue:
"A traditional panel discussion has prepared question sets that the panellists prepare for. The danger is that a speaker prepares and thinks carefully about what to say, and does not focus at all on what the others are saying. Prepared statements and points get pushed through even when they miss the shared conversation. It stiffens thinking. With Topaasia you cannot drift off on a tangent, because you are forced to react to what the others say. With Topaasia, panellists can reach a dialogue."
—
Thank you Jutta, the SHIFT crew and the panellists
https://theshift.fi