At the end of each half hour in a brainstorming group, the participants have five minutes to relax their brains and saunter over to the next group.

But for the people in the data room, the work is just beginning.

In each brainstorming group, the participants generate ideas about the issues facing employment for people with disabilities and possible solutions. Instead of chatting or evaluating, members write their ideas on Post-its, which are then tacked to one of four two-and-a-half by two feet large pages. After generating ideas, participants vote on the ones they like best with small, round stickers.

Those Post-its are revised, written on top of, moved around into groups and those with similar themes are circled and labeled.

There are so many Post-its, they have to be taped onto the pages before leaving the rooms. All those Post-its, covered in every array of handwriting, are collected and delivered en masse to the people in the data room.

Those people, whether there’s four or six of them, have 30 minutes to read, interpret and type up all the Post-its before the next bunch arrives.

In Reno, the piles stacked up and the four people assigned to type up 120 people’s ideas had to catch up during lunch.

But in Elko, the process got easier. For the 50 or so people participating, there were six people typing. The poster-sized papers had gotten better organized and group leaders were urging their members to write with more precise, active words.

For the last day those sheets will get collected, the data collectors were so organized, they even got time to relax between sessions, too.

Read more about the Elko and Reno Employment Summits on NCED’s blog at:
Three Summits, six days, two tired facilitators
Out of the gate running: Employment Summit’s First Day
Hashing out action plans: Employment Summit’s Second Day