This is my own invention, so it will likely fail poorly this week but hopefully we can turn it into a valuable process for exploring the idea space of ribbonfarm.com.

"Trial" comes from the idea of an essay ("essai" in French, which means "to try"), a writing style devoted to trying out original ideas, the sense of trying someone or something in a court of law, and controlled environments for high performance testing for athletes or machines. "Speed" is actually superfluous; it's simply a reminder of its importance. Essays, law trials, and performance trials are speed-dependent: the tempo of an essay or cross-examination is just as important as the content itself.

In Peak Flow, the medium for our speed trials will be storytelling. Your ability to tell "the most compelling and elegant story" relies both on having a mastery of the content and being able to set and change the pace of delivery by reading your audience, teammates, and adversaries in real time. If our objective is to become original thinkers, we have to learn how to think out loud. Doing so requires confidence, and confidence is learned through experience with friction. In these speed trials, your classmates will provide the friction.

Protocol

Preparation: I will divide you into groups and give you a set of ideas or a question to research. Begin with a Google site search of the ideas on ribbonfarm.com, everything you need will typically be there. Some terms pop up in multiple posts, others are tackled in a single paragraph. It's up to you to determine how much you need to read to understand enough to place each of the terms into a "compelling and elegant" story. Prepare notes, bring a presentation on a laptop, rehearse diagrams you want to draw, practice in front of the mirror, day dream,... whatever gets you prepared to perform on the spot.
Roles: In class, I will randomly assign roles to play in the speed trial enactment.
Storyteller: The "storyteller" will start by telling the story they have prepared. The storyteller's objective is to set the pace from beginning to end while enduring disruptions from the cross-examiner.
Cross-Examiner: The cross-examiner alone can ask a total of five 'why' questions during or after the story telling. Their objective is to attempt to hijack the tempo of the story and have the storyteller ask to switch roles without breaking the limits of good behavior.
Judge: The judge presides over the speed trial, overruling inappropriate questions from the cross-examiner, forcing the storyteller to answer appropriate questions they ignore, or enforcing a switch. In extreme circumstances, the judge can eject the cross-examiner and fulfill the role themselves, absconding judge duties to God.
Reporter: The reporter will take notes during the speed trial.
Jury: After the story, everyone else can ask questions of the storyteller, cross-examiner, or judge. The jury then votes to assign the badges of sociopath, clueless, and/or loser to each of the three participants.
God: I will play God, intervening when necessary and resolving disputes with absolute authority.

Assessment

Participants will be assessed both on the content – how well they are able to synthesize their research into stories that are understandable and valuable to their classmates, ask poignant and relevant questions, or steer the conversation towards the most fruitful territory – and their ability to control the tempo. The latter is dependent on style. As in the scoring of a figure skating competition, certain techniques will have a higher value, such as chalk talk over a formal prepared presentation. The ideal is Steve Jobs, the anti-model is a TED talk. See, for instance:

Steve Jobs Chalk Talk at NeXT

List of Speed Trials

Week 2: VUCA