The difference in opinion I am seeing relates to the depth of information we are trying to provide. On one hand it would be nice to allow everybody to see/hear/participate in everything. On the other hand it would be great to allow people to get into in depth discussions about specific topics that interest them.
My personal preference (and this pertains to the fact that I am much more of a big picture person) is to go with the more general, moderated Q&A with a focus on several (read: 5-10) topics with the possibility of more if stuff moves along quickly. I fully agree that people may lose interest in somethings so time management will be critical. Obviously certain topics are going to be more interesting for some then others and that is certainly something we will have to work around.
The problem I see (for me personally anyways) is if we break out into small groups of 10-20 there may be multiple sessions I want to participate in but because this will all be happening at the same time I will have to chose which one I want to attend, or it may be decided with a certain work group filling up (how do we decide who gets to go to what? Site Seniority?)
A possibility (and I don't know how the master schedule is coming together) is to have the Q&A session as one of the first events and then schedule a few "focus group" meetings over the next day or so that people can sign up to attend if that subject interests them. I can see this for something like "unions" and "training study habits" and maybe "CRM". If they aren't scheduled for conflicting times people can go to multiple ones but they can also me limited to a workable number by a first come first serve sign up.
Again, that is depending on space available and how we can work around other events.
I'd be happy to moderate, but I think Mark's faith in my skillz might be slightly misplaced
