Facilitating remote workshops
Alberto Brandolino has some interesting thoughts on
Facilitating event storming workshops remotely (not a favourable option for all flavors)
Do it remotely -- even the non-favourable ones -- when you have to (COVID-19)
Challenges when Preparing Conducting a (full-day) workshop
on-site:
- external consultants
- don't arrive on short notice
- don't pop in for short sessions
- typical 3-day-assignment:
- 2 days prep (full-day sessions),
- 1 full-day workshop
remote challenge:
try to do the same remote and watch your stamina oozing
options:
make multiple shorter (90mn, 120mn) sessions, possibly distributed over several days.
Allow for breaks every 45 minutes.
Catering
You can't run a full day without replenishing your energy (food, drinks).
on-site:
Offer a nice catering buffet
remote challenge:
Every participant has to prepare her own catering. If neglected, it often becomes an impediment for team work later in the day.
options:
Schedule enough time, especially for lunch, allowing for additional preparation time
Checking In
on-site:
Quick Question (as described over at retromat)
remote challenge:
"Passing the mike around" on conference calls can be akwardly clumsy and eats away a lot of your precious workshop time
options:
Ask your audience the quick-question and gather the answer in the form of a collaborative tag cloud.
available tools: menti, polleverywhere ...
Setting the Stage
on-site:
short lightning talk, supported by flipchart or whiteboard
remote challenge:
lack of participants engagement, participants might get distracted by other
multiple break out sessions
in roughly the following shape
- Motivate the sessions goal
- Work
- Present the results
- Retrospect
- Rinse, repeat
interrupted by several breaks
Closing
socializing / get together
Techniques
Basic Setup
Consider the recommendations from effective homeoffice
Remote Fishbowl
Use a video conferencing tool with a gallery view option (e.g. BlueJeans)
Add as many discussion participants to the bowl as nicely fit on your audience's screen (e.g. up to 6 in 2 x 3 layout)
As with the usual fish bowl, kindly ask the participants to staff the fish bowl autonomously. And to ask questions (e.g. unmute their mic) only, when in the bowl.
This way, no matter how large your audience, the audio channel only has to cope with the participants in the bowl.
Gallery Walk
Mural
Break out session
on-site:
from a larger meetup, break out a group, move to an available room with a whiteboard. Stick your heads together and sketch out some fresh ideas.
remote challenge:
Facilitating several meeting can be cumbersome
Whiteboards are great for collaboration. Sketches drawn with mouse and keyboard turn out often less than ideal.
options:
Keep the master video-conference call open for moderation and coordination.
Create one whiteboard and/or conference call per breakout session.
In the whiteboards upload drawings from specialized diagramming solutions (e.g. draw.io).
or use a [[collaborative diagramming solution|Tools_for_Remote_Collaboration#Collaborative Diagramming]] for the breakout session in the first place.
If you have more groups than mentors, the groups can ask questions in the master video conference's chat, so a mentor can join the discussion in the breakout session.
giving talks
on-site:
a speaker gives a talk, supported by slides shown on a large projector screen
remote challenge:
screen resolution and screen real estate can render slides unreadable
pre-workshop tutorial
since tools will inevitably get into some participants way, all tool setup and getting started takes place in a pre-workshop tutorial.
After completing the tutorial, each participant
can log into all tools
has an idea, what each tool can do
has the right to partipate in the actual workshop
Collaborative Documents
Google Docs
--ghp-dev