The waiting list is the signal that an experience is desirable. It says: more people want this than can have it at any given time, and the currency of admission is patience rather than selection. The waiting list is a reasonable system for managing demand for a product that is the same product for every person who receives it. The Naora leg is not the same product for every person who receives it.
It is the experience of twelve specific people in a specific ocean at a specific time, and its quality is determined by the combination of those twelve people in a way that makes the waiting list the wrong system for managing access to it.
The waiting list accepts people in the order they arrived and delivers the experience in the order of the list. The conversation accepts people in the order that the fit is confirmed and delivers the experience in the order that the confirmed fit allows.
These are different systems with different outcomes. The waiting list produces the group of people who waited longest. The conversation produces the group of people who are right for the experience and for each other. After five years of watching what the twelve-person offshore group produces when it has been assembled through selection, I cannot imagine running the Naora programme on a waiting list.
What the Conversation Actually Is
The conversation is thirty minutes. It is not a pitch. We are not trying to convince you that the Naora voyage is the right thing for you. We are trying to understand whether it is the right thing for you, which is a different activity.
The questions we ask are the questions of the person who wants to understand what you are looking for, what your relationship with the offshore experience is, whether the specific combination of the sailing and the diving and the passage and the community is the combination that addresses the thing you are actually looking for. If it is, the conversation will produce a booking. If it is not, the conversation will produce a recommendation that is more useful to you than a booking would be.
The people who come to the conversation with the agenda of saying the right things to be accepted are the people for whom the conversation does not typically produce a booking.
Not because the selection is trying to identify the performance and reject it but because the person who is performing the fit rather than having it typically reveals the performance in the thirty minutes, and the revelation is useful to both parties: the Naora team understands that the fit is not there, and the person understands that the thing they were performing the desire for is not the thing they actually want.
Both outcomes are better than the waiting list, which would have put them on the boat regardless.
