The flurry of activity appears to have slowed down. Conversation frequency is reducing, which means opportunities for feedback about Coffee Time are more rare.

This doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about this stuff! The need for good human conversation continues to be greater than ever.

To that end I’m starting to dream about a big shift. How do we completely reduce the friction it takes to host a Coffee Time conversation?

Do we make the app easier and easier for folks who already know what Lean Coffee is? Or do we chart a completely different course, shaking off the shackles of that structure?

Coffee Time was originally inspired by Lean Coffee, Deep Democracy, Sociocracy, and very light touches of Solution Focused Brief Therapy. You can see their influence in the tools hardly anybody uses.

Pure Lean Coffee has a static agenda. But in Sociocracy we recognize that as a conversation progresses people’s minds shift and what they used to think was important may no longer be. So you can add topics and change votes while the conversation progresses. This concept is new to folks.

There is no notion of getting a “sense of the group” in a regular Lean Coffee conversation. But with the pulse check (inspired by Deep Democracy and refined by Brief Therapy’s scales), you can quickly see what is going on beneath the surface. But who would think to throw up a quick pulse check? How would they know the benefits?

So I’m wondering the direction we should go down. Marketing Coffee Time as a free Lean Coffee app would get many more people involved at least. But I think it would put us in a kind of niche that would sort of make it impossible to realize our mission: creating a better world through good human conversation.

We would, in effect, become another software tool for software builders. Helpful for sure. But very narrow in its application.

So my challenge now is — how to reimagine this app such that it becomes a virtual Swiss Army Knife of human conversation? Sure, the Lean Coffee agenda style is useful. But there are so many other styles that also have uses! And in some situations the Lean Coffee approach isn’t actually the right one!

Well, anyway.. that’s where my brain is right now. If you are inspired to talk more, hit me up!