Skip to main content

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
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

And the unconference happened

 Most conferences have an agenda. No, not the stated agenda, but an agenda of marketing, airtime to sponsors, ensuring the past and future customers are invited, of ensuring that the "stars" of the industry are invited and attention showered of them. All in all it is a your scratch my back, I scratch your back syndrome. Some of these become cliques and claques and therefore the real point behind a conference is lost. And then there is the unconference - organised and run by the alumni of the ISABS ODCP program. And as the name suggests, this is truly an un-conference organised by the alumni, for the alumni. No funders - except the alumni themselves. No sponsors. Just the team.  I havent seen a more tastefully organised conference (yes, its an unconference).  To begin with - the location - not a typical star hotel, but an outdoorsy place. The food - simple. The welcome - personal. It was like a homecoming. The setting was warm and welcoming. It was a smaller conference. Ju...
Post a Comment
Read more

The power of jotting down ideas

 Long long ago, I always used to carry a small letterpad with me. To jot down ideas that might occur. Over the years, it has changed from a notepad to evernote to google keep, but the power of jotting down ideas is immense.  Small ideas go into keep.  Anything to be quickly typed goes into whatsapp as a self message.  Bigger or better formed ideas go into Google docs A few are still written, but I manage to copy them into a digital format sooner rather than later.  But the power of jotting down is immense. My google keep is an encyclopedia of ideas - most of which may never get implemented. 
Post a Comment
Read more

No conferences

Decided not to attend any conferences this year. Atleast not the typical ones I have often ranted about here. Will be both choosy and intentional about which ones to attend.  The ones to attend are the ones put up by practitioners of a craft. The rest is marketing one way or other. 
Post a Comment
Read more