Reversed Classroom Approach for More Efficient Cross-Team Discussions

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After participating in the Waku offsite in Budapest (November 2025), I want to share an idea based on my personal experience. This could be particularly helpful for cross-team discussions about technical topics. It’s especially relevant during offline meetings where face-to-face time is scarce.

The Challenge

While the offsite was largely positive and enabled valuable cross-team collaboration, I identified one area for improvement based on my personal experience. I found it challenging to meaningfully participate in discussions about technical problems outside my immediate expertise.

Most sessions did include an oral introduction to provide context. However, it was still difficult for me to continue the discussion without having time to think about the problem on my own. Conversations frequently began with significant shared context among those already working on the issue. This made it difficult for me to catch up and understand the core problems, approaches, and trade-offs being discussed.

A Potential Approach: Inverted Classroom

This reminds me of the “inverted classroom” concept from education. Instead of using meeting time to transmit information (like traditional lectures), we can shift information sharing to preparation time. This lets us dedicate valuable face-to-face time to interactive collaboration and discussion.

The approach works like this:

  1. Before the meeting: One person familiar with the topic writes a brief memo covering the basics, core questions, and context

  2. During the meeting: Participants come prepared with questions and can engage in high-bandwidth collaborative discussion

Example: Waku Payment Protocols Discussion

Here’s how this might work for a Waku payment protocol discussion, a topic I’m familiar with and could prepare a memo for.

Pre-meeting memo might include:

  • Context: Logos protocols (Waku Store, Lightpush) have request-response structures requiring economic sustainability

  • Goal: Compensate Service Providers for resources spent serving user requests

  • Core question: Compare anonymous ticket systems (similar to Chaumian e-cash) vs. payment/state channels (Lightning Network style)

  • Discussion objective: Evaluate pros/cons of each approach for Waku service incentivization

Meeting focus:

  • Collaborative analysis of trade-offs

  • Identify any missed approaches

  • Decision on most suitable approach for Waku protocols

  • Define next steps if more research is needed

Benefits

This approach could help make cross-team discussions more valuable for everyone:

  • Enable richer discussions across different areas

  • Make limited face-to-face time more productive

  • Encourage focused preparation beforehand

  • Tap into diverse team perspectives effectively

The memo functions like an academic paper’s background section. It provides sufficient context for productive collaboration without requiring deep prior expertise.

Conclusion

Maybe we could experiment with this approach occasionally for future offsites and cross-team meetings. When we have sessions covering topics that span different areas of expertise, a brief prep document might make our discussions more productive for everyone.

I’d be happy to write these prep memos for topics I’m familiar with (like the payment protocols example above) when organizing such discussions.

Note that this isn’t meant for all meetings. Small sub-teams that already share context don’t need this approach. Anyone can experiment with it as they see fit, though I think it’s most valuable when face-to-face time is limited and precious.

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