01/02/03
Pages 145-154
At Xerox PARC CSL, Taylor refined the approach he used at ARPA of letting people who were more competent than he technically grill each other while he watched so that he could assess their work. At PARC CSL, the process was called "Dealer" because, just as in blackjack the dealer plays against everyone, in CSL the presenter had to field questions from everyone present and defend the ideas presented. When it got out of control, Dealer could be brutal, and some felt the process was not always objective. Sometimes, an opponent who could think very fast might sway sentiment against what later turned out to be a good idea whose slower thinking proponent took too long to come up with a defense against the objection.
Much of the time, it worked very well in that if an idea passed Dealer, then people would volunteer to help make the idea work. And the volunteers came from a PARC staff that included the very best people anywhere in computing.