When someone is addressing a group, a yawn serves two purposes. One, it tells the speaker - the rare one who cares to notice it - that someone is bored. Two, it produces more yawns, which in turn tell the speaker... well, you get the picture.

I was fortunate to be part of the innovation process that led to YawnBuster, and in this post I'll try to capture some of it.

When one person speaks and others listen in a moderate size group, one thing that often breaks down is two-way communication.

Suppose you are in the audience. If you let this person go on rambling, you get one-way monologue. If you interrupt too many times, the speaker may lose the thread and everyone ends up in a mess.

Now let's see this from the speaker's perspective. If I talk non-stop, I may end up getting bored of my own voice. If I encourage people to talk, someone could easily go off on a tangent.

Clearly, what is needed is a way to present, where four conditions are satisfied.

1. The speaker can control the amount of interaction
2. The interaction serves a specific purpose: energizes the audience, creates fun, provides a breather and so on
3. Everyone has a way to participate
4. The interaction is organized and guided by some kind of a structure. (Sometimes, stating it negatively is more emphatic. So let's just say: No chaos.)