Terrific First Chat: what we gained and learned

Thanks to everyone who attended the first chat. It was really a work in progress and so overall we were really happy with the result. We had a nice turnout considering many people don't have the book yet and it was a holiday weekend in the USA. At no time in five hours did we have less than 10 people watching, observing, chatting and attending. The attendees changed throughout the five hours so we had lots of different folks participating. The conversations about the book were thorough, though provoking, insightful and sometimes moving. We learned a lot about each of our different approaches, joys and problems with our practices. We shared personal reflections and spoke globally about concepts. Considering that it was only on two chapters, we were really impressed with the breadth of what we covered.

We also came away with some ideas and suggestions about how to change/improve the next chat. We apologize in advance for the lack of a transcript of last night's chat. We both attempted to do it and were unsuccessful. We hope to resolve this before next week, if we can't we will take a survey of whether this is desired and may have to move to a diff chatting format to do so. So, here's what we learned:

1.) A shorter chat time and one hour later seemed to be the preference. The first three hours were rousing conversation and fewer people could attend later. We really are trying to accommodate many different time zones and locations so this may change again. For now the chats will be on Sunday evenings from 6-9 p.m. CST.

2.) Guided chats would be nice. In other words, suggesting thought questions we could cover during our chat for people to have prepared/think about while reading/chatting. We will be offering some for chapters 3-5 later today in a new blog post.

3.) Chat transcripts/review are great. We had a couple people join us later (one even from her job in Australia... thanks Jamie!) and they would have liked to review what we had already covered. The Ning chat would not allow us to do that. We are working on fixing this option if possible.

If you partook in the chat, if you observed or if you wanted to be there and weren't but still have ideas for improving it let us know here! This is your club, help us steer it in the direction you'd like. Thanks again for all the yogic love and chat. Namaste... Nancy and Jenny