Barod - Ready to Work

On Tuesday, we ran a game at the Swansea Behaviour Change Festival. We called it ' Swansea’s Got Jargon*-Busters'. *Jargon: a word or phrase not used in everyday life, or that is being used with a different, special meaning. It often goes with waffling and speaking too fast. We wanted to see if, when faced with a panel of three people with learning difficulties, people could talk for 2 minutes about their job or what they'd learned at the Festival without using jargon. If someone on the panel couldn't understand them easily, they would buzz. Three buzzes and you're out. If you are still going at 2 minutes, you got a rosette saying 'I'm a Jargon Buster'.  Summary People who took part, the panel and the observers were surprised and pleased that people succeeded. Face to face communication is easier than communicating in writing. Jargon is comfortable. You need to know your subject to be able to explain it without jargon. If you find ...

I’m sat in Café Nero in Fforestfach. I’m drinking coffee and blogging. I’m watching people sat alone, reading papers, staring into the distance, doing paperwork. I can see the couples sat in silence, and the couples talking. I can see the women in the window seats glued to their smart phones. Usually, but not today, I watch a group of mothers laughing together with babies in prams, or a group of older women Earlier today I was part of a talking couple, catching up with my husband. And then we got talking about ‘coffee shop conversations’. That’s something I do in coffee shops as part of Barod, but not today. And it’s something I’m researching for a PhD. Imagine, the group of mothers get talking about the local maternity service. A fly on the wall would have a field day learning by listening to them. The fly would hear all sorts of things that weren’t said at the formal consultation on the future of that service. I did listen in to one of those conversations a few years a...