Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jeff Thompson on July 6, 2011 at 8:29pm

Lynsee,

 

Thank you for taking the effort to put together this round of the book club.  I really enjoyed it!  One thing that came into play for me, and I am not sure if it happened for anyone else is- although we are all very busy with the work we do, the summer seems a bit busier (and perhaps I might be a little bit lazier?) and that made things a tougher with contributing as much as I would have liked to.

 

Anyone else experience that?

 

When do you (and everyone else) think we should do it again?

Permalink Reply by Nicole Bohe on July 23, 2011 at 8:06pm

I have some feedback, and please do not take it as criticism or negativity. I think you've done an amazing job choosing books and getting discussions going. And my comments are probably issues you have already thought of and may not have an answer right now, but here we go...

 

I don't think there is never really a "good time" for a book club. It's either something you want to do or not. Summer might be lazy but fall and spring bring packed semesters that likely won't have free time to read anything not assigned for school. And winter brings a busy holiday season. It's more about people making time for the things they enjoy and want to do. The trick is making the ADRHub Book Club one of those things on people's lists!

And I think with book clubs like this, that focus on a really narrow subject matter, can be difficult to continually sustain participation. For example, the key demographic is likely students, but we are already reading material very similar to this for class and engaging in discussion in those arenas. It's hard to feel like you've already had this discussion and are struggling to contribute something new. In traditional book clubs you can bounce from fiction, to non-fiction, to biographies and then back to fiction. It seems most conflict resolution books are more of the "how-to" variety.

So perhaps you could broaden the subject matter slightly? Maybe like a biography of some business titan who has faced a lot of obstacles and discusses how to work through them (I have no clue if such a book exists, but it should...)?

As far as getting more participation, it might help if you make it so people can still participate without reading the book. By this I mean you should continue the discussions for this group, but maybe post a quick link on the main ADRHub page inviting people to review the comments even though they haven't read the material. It might generate some questions  since people aren't going to know the background of what is being discussed. This time around it seemed that participation was possible without necessarily having read the material.

Another idea might be to coordinate somehow with the Werner classes. We've read quite a few novels for class and professors could encourage (require?) participation in the book club discussions to gain participation points.

I'll keep you posted on other ideas that come to mind. Thank you again for the great discussions!

Permalink Reply by Lynsee Swisher on July 23, 2011 at 8:22pm

Nicole.

 

Thank you so much for your great feedback. I agree with many of your points and as this being still "new", it takes time to grow, define, and refine.

 

I will be sure that these points are discussed and I look forward to the next book club!

 

Thanks for all your awesome insight, I appreciate your participation.

 

All the best,

 

Lynsee