Core77

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The rubber meets the road: Today was a mad scramble to finish up our work and put together the dreaded 3-minute Big Idea presentation for 4 o'clock. (The broad groups were Education Innovation, Sustainable Community Development, and Social Entrepreneurship.) Nobody knew how serious to take the 3-minute limit, but our group was extra cautious, rehearsed like mad, and managed to get to 3'20" by 3:20. Figuring that people usually talk faster when they're nervous, we felt close enough. (Turns out they were very serious, employing a bell at the 3-minute mark; no hook, mercifully.)

Thackara had his work cut out for him: between negotiating with technology-plagued teams ("we're seriously going to give you just one more minute to solve your PowerPoint issues") and teasing out content that was either unclear, over-time-limit, or just plain missing (he was a bit generous on this last item), the challenge of keeping the session moving and, well, "moving" was a bit of a trick.

And although the session proved fast, furious and fun, the 3-minute construct forced each of the groups to edit out and sacrifice so much content that, in the end, it just wasn't worth it. And the killer part is that those on-the-cutting-room-floor minutes of content--a reflection of many hours of painful and deliberate dialogue, debate and consensus--will never see the light of day, were never revealed to the Summit audience, and will likely never be known to the AIGA leadership. There are notes, somewhere, of course, but we all know how legible those are. [Seems that the AIGA has been working diligently with the studio leaders, post-summit, to capture everything they have. Excellent.]

[Check out a nice, quick-n-dirty overview from Alissa at Unbeige here.]

More pics after the jump.