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Virtual Facilitation

As someone who has facilitated numerous workshops, sessions, labs and gatherings face to face like many others, I have been sceptical of Virtual facilitation.

However in the past few months, I have handled Onboarding of leaders, run a virtual webinar with nearly 400 members in the audience, run sessions with 100+ attendees and run smaller cosier webinars with less than 20 attendees. The topics have ranged from Onboarding Leaders to Interview skills to Creativity workshops (who would have imagined) to Strategy workshops (indeed).

Up until now, while I had handled virtual webinars, it never seemed like the real thing. It was seen as a poor substitute to face to face workshops. 

I must admit, I am learning the tricks of the trade as I do so and enjoying the challenge! And every webinar I think I am unlocking newer levels of effectiveness.

Some tips:

Animation - used well is a great way to progress on a topic
Chat window - Both the group response and the private window are fantastic tools to be used in different contexts. 
Though I did run a highly interactive session for nearly 4 hours - anything more than 3 can be a tough climb.
Breakout rooms are effective
Use tools like Slido, Mentimeter to bring more engagement via activities into the workshops.
One has to get creative in activities - and I like this part of experimentation.

Am still learning:
In large workshops - there is a 50% drop rate using chat window or any of the above mentioned tools. So, avoid largish workshop - people tend to get diverted/lost. 
Video on or off - this is tricky with network/electricity issues - difficult to keep track. 
Different platforms have different ways of sharing screen, screen+video, viewing chat, viewing window...it does get confusing

#Stilllearning #olddognewtricks

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