Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

I'll make my own fun most anywhere even if something is not that thrilling.
But I'd really been looking forward to a day of 'creativity' and using my Belbin 'plantyness' and so forth.

In fairness the workshop itself was great, but...

The workshop we (myself and two computing academics) had travelled to attend had some 30 others present. The aim was to generate some 'nifty tools' that could be built and used in Second Life. We were split into 6 tables of 5 or 6 so we were divided up as much as we could be in terms of skills, background and experience with Second Life.

My table consisted of a very young lady who seemed overly shy, a transexual (guy presenting as a female), an Asian lady who's English seemed fine, a very obese lady, and myself. (I'm not suggesting I was any less odd than anyone else!) There didn't seem to be any problems with anyone individually, but they just sucked the life out of me. I tried not to get volunteered to report back to the whole group after discussions, I tried not to talk a lot, but there was just nothing going on with anyone. In fact, a couple of times I actively experimented for several minutes of not saying anything and the group just ground to a halt. Although we functioned in a basic sort of way to do the assigned tasks there just seemed to be no ooomph or engagement. None of my efforts to draw people out or anything seemed to achieve anything.

I'm not one to give up easily but had I not been being driven back by one of my colleagues at another table I might well have called it a day around 3pm. It wasn't helped by lunch being in the same room and due to lack of room to manouver, we ended up eating in our 'groups'. I could bear it no longer and said I'd always wanted to see the library of the university we were visiting and made my excuses for half an hour. (Glad that I did - the library had just introduced a lab of digital tools and toys to explore with physical e-books, toys, comfy seating and all sorts to inspire. Well worth a look round).

I survived the day and was fascinated to hear my colleagues had had great experiences at their tables so they weren't so keen on my feedback of us being moved around periodically.
What surprised me was that this wasn't some random work group that didn't really want to engage in any brainstorming or something. It wasn't a group of pressed me. It was people who had seen the advertising, chosen to come, travelled some distance in some cases and presumably wanted to contribute.

Interesting. But odd.