Many conferences make available a "message board" for the exchange of messages between participants. This is seldom a high priority concern of the organizers and in its usual form it has little impact on interactive processes within the conference.
Purpose-designed message cards or forms (see Message Forms / D1) have the potential to move the contents of the message board away from personal and incidental matters, but are unlikely of themselves to give an interaction which transcends the usual conference experience.
One or several masters can be displayed on a bulletin board (see Master Copies and Layout / E6); enlargement to A3 size helps readability. This may indeed be adequate for some meetings, but much is achieved by giving participants a complete set of all messages to mull over at their convenience, rather than whilst crowding in front of a bulletin board.
Experience is that people like to read the original handwritten messages, even though they are reproduced as a Bulletin. An advantage of combining the two forms is that the messages can be displayed as quickly as possible - if photocopies are taken, even whilst they are being typed.
Practically you need sufficient suitable vertical space at eye-level (1-2 metres above the ground) on which messages can be fixed (by pins, tape etc.). Not all meeting places have such facilities. Free-standing pinboards work very well.
Horus* Wall Display
Rather than simply sticking the message cards to a wall in any order, an editorial group could divide up the wall into sectors corresponding to conference themes and insert the cards (handwritten originals, or possibly typed or cut from the Bulletin) in the appropriate sector. Coloured ribbons could be used to link related cards in different sectors. A circular display could emphasize the integrative role of concentric sectors or the central sector.
* Horus stands for: Holistic Overview and Representation of Underlying Structure).
Nations pretending to be clean humanitarians is like cannibals on a health-kick eating only vegetarians. (Anonymous, EcoCity 2, Adelaide, 1992)