WLP273 Re-designing Events for the Online Space
A bonus episode encouraging those who move events like Town Hall meetings, community of practice meetings and conferences online, to approach the whole design process differently to how they would be run in the colocated space.
Bringing people together online is different to bringing people together in the same physical space. As more organisations adopt remote work or introduce a hybrid model, they need to consider the different ways in which people can interact and continue learning informally from each other.
Is the office the best place for certain interactions? Is it the online space? Is there more value in having those interactions synchronously or asynchronously?
In most organisations, before the pandemic, the choice for all interactions was in the same physical space. Now that many have experienced the online space, there is a choice of location. Both spaces have their limitations, but also their advantages.
When looking at how to carry out events online that used to be done colocated (in the same physical space), we need to approach them differently. Pilar mentions and example from an episode of Brave New Work: All Hands Meetings. (The episode is titled This and That.)
There’s no point in gathering everyone online just to share a presentation. There are other ways of doing it, and other ways of making the most out of sharing time together.
Starting to use the office space when everyone has been working from home is going to feel different, it needs to be approached as a transition. Even for distributed companies, the way of operating might feel different once the context changes again.
Judy Rees
07.40 Conversation with Judy Rees
Judy is an Online Events Consultant at Rees McCann, where they help people get together online, in events where the human to human connections is at least as important as the broadcast of content. (She’s also been on the show before!)
Typically they work with groups of 12 - +300 people on strategy workshops, communities of practice meetings, unconferences etc
Judy mentions her Metaphorum, all about clean language, run in a similar way to unconferences, which she’s now run five times. She’s used this expertise (and her many years of helping remote teams) to help organisations who were caught out by the pandemic with programmed colocated events that needed to be moved online. (If you want to find out more about the Metaphorum, check out this episode from Facilitation Stories.)
At ReesMcCann, they now focus on helping to design events, from beginning to end, to increase the human connection element. Events work best when participants are involved in some way from the start, before the events start. In this way you can facilitate those “corridor conversations” (or in the case of one of her clients, the pool!) to happen, using the content to spark off the conversation.
Some of the most challenging events to help with are those which need to take place on streaming platforms, technology that has been built to broadcast content but offers almost no opportunity for interaction.
Event organisers (whether a conference, or a meeting) need to take account of the make up of the group, how they’re used to communicating amongst each other, the kind of interactions you want, etc…
Online events can be great to include people who otherwise would not be able to attend. When the event focuses on a specialist area, online event works well as you can pull people from across the globe. Judy also talks about an event for a local community, where there was more diversity of people in the online event than previous in-person events - for example, 90 year olds who would not have travelled.
Pilar asks Judy about a component of their new online course Engaging Online Events, a step by step guide to help you plan online events: the development of a security protocol and troubleshooting plan. For highly engaging events, where people share documents, show up on video and have open discussions, event organisers have to think about the need to set up some kind of boundary with the outside.
Find out more about Judy, and sign up to her newsletter over at https://reesmccann.com/
28.40 More on Podcasting
Pilar talks about the recent Plan Your Podcast in 2 Weeks challenge that she recently ran through her new side-business Adventures in Podcasting. If you are a trainer, coach or facilitator and need help setting up your first show, get in touch with Pilar! (Or even if you don’t fall under one of those professions.)
And look out for more on our new service through Virtual not Distant, Podcasting for Connection. The aim is to help organisations set up their internal podcast - setting up regular audio episodes created by your people, something that belongs to the organisation as a whole, not only one of its layers. And also something that provides more of that human connection we heard Judy talk about.
Moving to a hybrid space, or fully distributed, requires that we are specific about the kind of conversations or connection we want from our colleagues. Only by being specific about it, can we design for them.
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