What a healthy disagreement looks like

Who was on stage

• For: Andrei Pitiș, Beniamin Mincu, Simona Olteanu.
• Against: Mihnea Măruță, Paul Olteanu, Laura Drăgoi.
• Chair: Șerban Pitic.

The room, with the team for on the left screen and the team against on the right. Photo: IQ Digital Summit.

In short, for anyone who has never seen one: in an Oxford-style debate, two teams defend and attack the same motion, speakers alternate, and the chair keeps time and order. There is no "both sides have a point". Each team takes a position and defends it to the end.

Simona Olteanu and Laura Drăgoi are competitive debaters, and it showed. They delivered like in the films about Oxford and Cambridge.

What impressed me

Strong arguments, no personal attacks. People argued about the idea, not about the person holding it. Nobody tried to make the other side look ridiculous to score a point.

Paul Olteanu, against the motion. Photo: IQ Digital Summit.

Direct questions, answers people stood behind. When someone asked a hard question, the other side didn't dodge it. They answered, even when the answer didn't perfectly serve their position.

An audience that joined in with its own arguments. The room didn't just listen. People came with questions and counterarguments, and the debate became everyone's.

And at the end, hugs and congratulations. People who had firmly contradicted each other minutes earlier congratulated each other sincerely. For me, that was the best moment of all.

At the end, the same stage: hugs and congratulations. Photo: IQ Digital Summit.

Three arguments that stayed with me

Control is a process problem, not an intelligence problem.

Simona Olteanu, for the motion. Permissions, test environments, a human in the loop, an external off switch. You don't need to understand the code to uninstall an app.

From the side against, one argument I keep turning over: every technological revolution has promised us abundance. The most recent one, social media, made us the experiment: our data was sold, our attention was manipulated. The promises around AI sound very similar. Why would it end differently?

Laura Drăgoi, against the motion. Photo: IQ Digital Summit.

And Laura Drăgoi, also against, closed with something nobody in the room could argue with: we all came there for human connection, not for one more screen.

Why it matters off stage too

At a time when we argue more than we listen, it was a lesson in how you can disagree with someone and respect them at the same time.

I take it into my everyday work as well. As a BA and PO, a good part of the job is bringing to the same table people who see the same problem differently: business, technical, users. The best decisions I have been part of didn't come from quick consensus, but from disagreements carried well: about ideas, with direct questions, and with people who stand behind what they say.

The rest of the day, with the numbers and ideas from each speaker, is in my note about IQ Digital Summit.

Which side would you have been on? Abundance or collapse?

All photos, including the cover: official IQ Digital Summit photos.