The messaging system is an integral part of the dialogue. There are message forms with your materials and on the tables. They will be collected from you, collated, processed and circulated to the participants periodically.

Instead of speaking, you may find it more appropriate to formulate your points in writing - others outside this session will then also be exposed to it. Here are some reasons you might wish to use it:

1. Intervening non-intrusively
• comments on points made by others
• questions, possibly addressed to specific speakers
• non-essential points
• unrelated points
• non-linear associations
• position statements
• supplementary information/details
• case studies/examples
• channel for observer comments
• additional issues you would like to discuss

2. Augmenting your involvement as a participant

• multiple communication tracks
• maximum use of participant time
• record of wall displayed messages
• remarks on the dialogue process and programme

3. Cross-fertilizing ideas

• feedback on interventions
• cross fertilization of insights
• interweaving preceding contributions
• invitations to gather (whether during breaks or after this meeting)

4. Post-dialogue communicating and reporting

• Interfacing with Forum-wide Da Zi Bao
• capturing insights
• creating a paper record
• statements addressed to the press
• proposals for declarations paragraphs

5. Reframing and meta-comments

• humour, anecdotes
• insightful metaphor
• wisdom and philosophy

Written by Nadia McLaren, Union of International Associations, with revisions and HTML layout by Robert Pollard, Information Habitat: Where Information Lives.