Why is a grid sometimes useful?

[Erik Fabian]

Hello,

I have been thinking about the bulletin board and the debate that happened a while back on this 
list about whether a totally free collage of session postings is somehow better than OS style events 
that use a grid layout that notes time/locations.

I agree that the complete free flowing collage approach has an elegant appeal but I have been 
asking myself a different question...why do some OS style events even use a grid?

I wonder how did the use of the grid evolve at these events? What is their value?

I can only speculate on how these event evolved into using a grid (or if that is how they started out 
perhaps) but I have realize one advantage...they allow new participants to easily to join in with an 
event that is already in progress.

When someone shows up late to a public event and encounters a messy session board it is hard, 
without further explanation, for them to understand what is going on, where it is happening, if it 
is happening, and if so when.

The original OS literature I have read usually emphasizes that participants are present start to 
finish. There are many obvious benefits to this but the relevant one here is that everyone is 
present during the original board making. They have some sense of how it evolved into whatever 
mess that it becomes and how it changes as people go about the experience.

It makes sense if the original OS literature isn't accounting late arrivals that it doesn't need 
something like a grid to help late arrivals get oriented quickly.

Thoughts?

Cheerio,
Erik

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