Group Dynamics

Yesterday's SMU Delhi Fresher's meet (organised, in part, by me) offered a great study in group dynamics, especially group formation dynamics. I met up with 12-13 people, of which I knew in person one, and by MSN maybe 2-4 so basically it was a first time group for pretty much everything. As is my grind, I was the first to arrive at the annointed venue, and thus had to sit around for about five minutes before the next chappie arrived. Each chappie was greeted with the questions "SMU?", at which point one started sitting around.
Now, a one to one new person conversation is slow, meandering and difficult. Once the group grew to around five to six, conversation became really very simple, and the dynamics were very fluid, so to speak. Pretty much everyone was involved, and the fun started. But the story didn't end there. There were more to come.

Now, see, difficulties start to present themselves after numbers ten and eleven show up. The group at this point is simply too large for a single conversation track to run, and thus two tracks develop. Now, things may start getting destructive as cross conversation develops. Luckily, and quite strangely, it was quite a non-defective group, and we corrected ourselves whenever something like that started up. We'd do awesome in a GD, is my humble opinion. But then, my opinion is never really very humble.

Once we hit 12-13 simple physical laws ensure that problems are going to arise. There is no realistic way to seat 12-13 people at Barista in a way that everyone can hear and talk to everyone, so at this point, your discussion is by force going to break up into two. Now one can judge how well people have got along as just in this one hour period, smaller subgroups will form, depending on what they have to discuss. So, for instance while three or four of us debated the merits of which laptop to take, a seperate housing discussion group opened up, while others discussed CCA's. From here on, things take a marked turn for the worse so what all good people must do to ensure that this newly formed seemingly effective group does not break up is....

Go For Lunch.