Experience : Does the way workshops are organized allow for mutual discussion?

On this very first evening, we can already focus on the way the workshops are organized. After participants all introduced themselves, they were all able describe their experiences (which still have to be turned into Experience Reports) and above all, formulate their challenges, their desires, and their dreams. But they had very limited time to do so, all the more that the translation problems (lexicological problems for the translation of specific words, but also material problems with the microphones) restricted the speakers even further.
At the beginning of the session, speaking time was fixed at 8 minutes maximum per person, which was obviously impossible to comply with… But to restrain people with such full experiences was frustrating. It was felt that so many crucial subjects were not being considered.
In spite of human-sized work groups, the statements remained "lectures" to some degree: each person stated his or her ideas without really listening to others. It was nearly impossible to ask and to answer questions. The elaboration of a common reflection was therefore exclusively handled by the summary drafted in the evening by the workgroup facilitators. However, during the elaboration of the "challenges," several participants worked collectively, especially in common-language groups, to formulate common challenges.