I was in a meeting a few weeks ago, and as it happened I had known most of the attendees for some years. Our conversation was around Makerspace in both K-12 and Post Sec, in particular teacher/instructor comfort in the realm, and especially creating authentic and meaningful experiences.

It’s the sort of conversation I love, because besides educators there were industry people, government people and IT/design people. All the best kinds of nerds.

I often surprise myself with how inarticulate I can become in a room full of people I especially want to talk to. I often feel like my brain and mouth are going two different directions. Case in point: I was talking about the philosophy behind rapid prototyping and design thinking, and one of the government fellows disagreed with something I said (because I hadn’t articulated it very well, probably). He expressed his opinion, and I knew we were actually in agreement, I just needed to reframe my thoughts. And so what I meant was: “You didn’t quite see what I was saying, but I see what you are saying, and we do not disagree, we agree”.  What I said was: “Oh no no, I…noyeah”.

And for the rest of the meeting, “Noyeah” was how we resolved all differences.  One of the meeting organizers even wrote it down, then asked if she could quote me on Twitter.

And speaking of Noyeah Tweets, that was another interesting moment.  Throughout the meeting, notes had been captured on chart paper around the room.  As we were wrapping up, I took photos of all the notes (not an uncommon practice) so that I could look at them later.  An organizer asked that the notes not be shared, and while I assured her they were for my own purposes, it launched another interesting conversation about how more and more we must think of Social Media in all settings, and more frequently meetings begin or end with a disclaimer or disclosure request: “Does anyone mind if I Tweet their comments/ picture/ name?” And more and more often, participants have clearly thought out responses to the request.

For me, it’s a Noyeah: “No I don’t mind, Yeah I understand the implications”.

I suppose it’s word cousins are: “Nono” and “Yeahyeah”.

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