The Covid-19 cloud has brought with it a number of silver linings. Completing many long overdue home projects; Time spent with the family vs commuting; Gaining insights into facilitating online remote workshops. The latter one I’d like to share a bit more on.
Having facilitated many co-located only; combined co-located & remote; remote only workshops. It seems remote only workshops can be as effective as co-located and that combining both should be avoided.
The case for co-located workshops: in a world without social distancing, getting folks together face to face is always the preference, but in my opinion more for the corridor, coffee station and after work beer chats. The social aspects build strong bonds that remote workshops cannot replace. That said there are downsides:
Trying to get everyone to 1 location when working with distributed teams causes delay and comes at quite considerable travel cost
Using physical stickies and boards is great, but there is a transcription overhead, if you need to get all the output back into Jira or ADO
Some organisations don’t have great co-located spaces, which can sometimes mean spending £ on external venues
The case for online remote only workshops: While you can’t easily replicate those coffee, beer chats that being in a single location offers. Using the right digital tools, social contracts and techniques can result in effective remote workshops. Some insights from last 8 weeks:
Zero travel barrier means remote only can be set up with little notice and zero travel cost
Using Teams or Zoom (with camera’s on) helps create a personal connection and Tiger King background will bring a sense of fun to events
Break out rooms in Zoom or parallel Teams calls for dividing and conquering works really well
Using digital whiteboards like Mural gives fast and easy ability to harvest group brain power. People who don't normally come forward when face 2 face might feel comfortable doing so from their home office
If Mural licensing is an issue, only the host needs a license with unlimited anonymous log ins for all attendees to participate
For time keeping use time timer gif’s for 30, 10, 5 minute countdown
If conversation rabbit holes, participants can paste a dancing penguin into the chat - cue facilitator to take discussion offline
Social etiquette like “brb” and “back” if you need to leave the call for Amazon delivery or to make kids some toast
The case against combining co-located and remote workshops: This carries all of the drawbacks of co-location without many of the benefits of remote only workshops. The key drawback is the difficulty in keeping remote attendees connected to the flow of the workshop. Even with a great camera and audio setup and being super aware.
At best it slows down the workshop by having to get someone to capture the online folks ideas on stickies, carry out voting for them, etc. At worst they become left behind and you hear facilitator saying things like “any final thoughts from those on the call” or “did you guys manage to get all of that”.
The problem becomes amplified when working in organisations that have poor facilities and setups.
I’m sure I will get a barrage of Coaches and Facilitators disagreeing, please do and please share your techniques for how to make the combination of both as effective as co-located only or remote only workshops.
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