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Panels as if the audience mattered

Monday, July 18th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

Yes, it’s possible to create amazing panels!

I’m in San Antonio, Texas, having just run two 90-minute “panels” at a national association leadership conference. I say “panels” because in both sessions, the three “panelists” presented for less than five minutes. Yet after both sessions, participants stayed in the room talking in small groups for a long time. That’s one of my favorite signs that a session has successfully built and supported learning, connection, and engagement.

You may be wondering how to effectively structure a panel where the panelists don’t necessarily dominate the proceedings. How can we let attendees contribute and steer content and discussion in the ways they want and need? There’s no one “best” way to do this of course, but here’s the format I used for these two particular sessions.

Session goals

Each session was designed to discover and meet the wants and needs of the executive officers and volunteers of the association’s regional chapters’ members in an area of special interest. The first session focused on a key fundraising event used by all of the participants. The second covered the more general topic of chapter fundraising and sponsorship.

Room set

Room set has a huge effect on the dynamics of a session. Previous sessions in our room had used head tables with table mikes and straight-row theater seating (ugh; well, at least it was set to the long edge of the thin room.) I had the tables removed, the mikes replaced with hand mikes, and the chairs set to curved rows. We included plenty of aisles so that anyone could easily get to the front to speak (see below).

Welcome and a fishbowl sandwich

After a brief welcome and overview, I began a four-chair fishbowl sandwich format, which turns every attendee into a participant right at the start, and ensures that they end up participating too. This format is my favorite way to create amazing panels. Fishbowl allows control over who is speaking by having them move to a chair at the front of the room. Check the link for a description of this simple but effective way to bring participation into a “panel”.

Body voting

Next, I used body voting, to give participants relevant information about who else was in the room. For example, I had everyone line up in order of chapter size, so people could:

discover where they fit in the range of chapters present (from 80 to 2,600 members);
meet participants whose chapters were similar in size to their own; and
give everyone a sense of the distribution of chapter sizes represented.

Additional body votes uncovered information about:

revenue contributions from dues, events, and sponsorship;
promotional modalities used;
member fees; and
other issues related to the session topic.

I also gave participants the opportunity to ask for additional information about their peers in the room. This is another powerful way for participants to discover early on that they can determine what happens during their time together. I used appropriate participatory voting techniques (see also here, and here) to get answers to the multiple requests that were made.

Panelist time!

Several weeks before the conference, I scheduled separate 30-minute interviews with the six panelists to educate myself about the issues surrounding the session topics and to discover what they could bring to the sessions that would likely be interesting and useful for their audience. After the interviews were complete, I reviewed our conversations and determined that each panelist could share the core of their contributions in five minutes. So I asked each panelist to prepare a five-minute (maximum!) talk that covered the main points they wanted to make.

During the first session, I brought up the panelists to the front of the room individually. As each panelist gave their talk, I allowed questions from the audience, and, as I should have expected, each panelist’s five minutes expanded (by a few minutes) as they responded to the questions. So for the second session, I tried something different. All three panelists sat together with me, and I asked the audience to hold questions until all three had finished. Each panelist gave a five-minute presentation, and then I facilitated the questions that followed.

In my opinion, having only one panelist at the front of the room at a time creates a more dynamic experience. But on balance, I think the second approach worked better as there was some overlap between what the panelists shared, and when questions ended there was a more natural segue to the next segment of the session.

Fishbowl

At this point, we switched to a fishbowl format. I had the panelists return to front-row audience chairs, from where they could easily return to the “speaking” chairs. (They were frequent contributors to the discussions that followed.) I identified some hot issues and listed them for participants. I then invited anyone to sit in one of the three empty front-of-the-room chairs next to me to share their innovations, solutions, thoughts, questions, and concerns. Anyone wishing to respond or discuss joined our set of chairs and I facilitated the resulting flow of conversation. Some of the themes I suggested were discussed. But a significant portion of the discussion in both sessions concentrated on areas that none of my panelists had predicted.

The capability of the fishbowl process to adapt to whatever participants actually want to talk about is one of its most attractive and powerful features. If I had used a conventional panel for either session, much more time would have been spent on topics that were not what the audience most wanted to learn about, and unexpected interests would have been relegated to closing Q&A.

Consulting

During my opening overview of the format, I explained that we might have time for some consulting on a participant’s problem toward the end of the session. We didn’t have time for this during the first session — given a break, we could have probably taken another hour exploring issues that had been raised — but we had a nice opportunity during the second session to consult on an issue for a relatively new executive officer.

Another option that I offered, which we didn’t end up exploring in either session, was to share lessons learned (aka “don’t do this!”) — a useful way to help peers avoid common mistakes.

Closing

With a few minutes remaining, I closed the fishbowl and asked participants to once again form pairs and share their takeaways from the session. The resulting hubbub continued long after the sessions were formally over, and I had to raise my voice to thank everyone for their contributions and declare the sessions complete.

When an audience collectively has significantly more experience and expertise than a few panelists — as was the case for these sessions (and a majority of the sessions I’ve attended during forty years of conferences) — well-facilitated formats like the one I’ve just described are far more valuable to participants than the conventional presentations and panels we’ve all suffered through over the years. Use them to create amazing panels, and your attendees will thank you!

Create amazing panels!

At the conference sessions I design and facilitate, everyone is “up there” instead of “down here.” Yours can be too! To learn how to build sessions that build and support learning, connection, and engagement, sign up for one of my North American or European workshops.

Bruce Eric Kaplan cartoon displayed under license from The Cartoon Bank

Tags: body voting, conference panels, fishbowl, fishbowl sandwich, panel design, panels, participatory voting| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

The Next Best Thing

Monday, July 11th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

“Best” is context-specific, a matter of opinion, and transitory. So, there will always be a next best thing.

When we use “best” dishonestly, we ignore one or more of these realities. We appeal to status, implying that our “best” thing is absolutely best, transcending environment, viewpoint, and the passage of time.

Claiming the highest status for our “best” thing preys on our audience’s fears by offering a simplistic solution. “Believe us, buy this, and Bingo! You can stop worrying that you might have made a mistake!”

Sure, when aware of environmental and personal context, it’s fine to make an in-the-moment judgment that some course of action is the best of multiple alternatives (be sure there are at least three!) We do this all the time.

But when we simply slap on a “Best” label we are selling comforting feelings disguised as our product or service.

In addition, believing that we have or are the best does us a disservice. We will focus on “best” practices instead of next practices. Consequently, we may maintain the status quo, but with the danger that at any time a competitor could make our “best” second best.

Ultimately, what’s important is to continuously strive to be the best, not for the sake of being the best, but from a genuine desire to provide the best value/outcomes/opportunities for one’s organization or clients. Rather than feeling proud under the illusion that you are the “best”, work to be proud of your own efforts and achievements (including the learning that occurs when things don’t go according to plan or you take a risk that doesn’t pan out.)

Live with the knowledge that “best”, while well worth pursuing, is a moving fluid target. Remember, there will always be a next best thing.

Photo attribution Flickr user thomashawk

Tags: best, best practices, marketing, next practices, status| Posted in Soapbox | 1 Comment »

Lessons for #eventprofs from an improv and mindfulness workshop — Part 2

Tuesday, July 5th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

I have learned so many lessons from improv. Here are more of my experiences and takeaways for event professionals from the wonderful five-day improv and mindfulness workshop Mindful Play, Playful Mind, held June 8-13 2016, at Mere Point on the beautiful Maine coast — followed by their relevance to event design (red). (Here’s Part 1.)

The YOU game

In the YOU game, participants stand in a circle and create — by saying YOU and pointing to someone — patterns of categories, such as people’s names or breeds of dogs, around the circle. (Detailed description & instructions can be found here.) When you have several different patterns going around simultaneously, things get hectic. When we add people moving to the next person’s place in the pattern while playing, things get…demanding! The game vividly drives home this golden rule: When communicating, ensure your message is received! When everyone successfully implements this rule, the YOU game flows despite its complexity. And when we slip up, the patterns mysteriously disappear…

Successful event professionals learn the importance of this golden rule early! Another way to think about and practice this rule is the ask, tell, ask formulation.

Status

I have written about status in both my books, as it’s an important aspect of event design—and improv. At the workshop, we played several improv games that explored status and allowed us to practice taking status roles and working to change our own or others’ status. One example was a two-person scene we played over and over again with the same dialog:

Player1: Hello.
Player2: Hello.
Player1: Been waiting long?
Player2: Ages.

Each player had the option to choose their original status and then work to raise or lower their own or the other player’s status. Qualities of body stance, control of space, speech, and interaction affect status, and it’s something that I would like to be more aware of in my life. As a facilitator, I typically work to equalize status with people with whom I’m working, but, programmed by my upbringing, I also have a tendency on meeting new people to default to lower status until I know them better. Improv status work helps me become more aware of such proclivities.

Ted also introduced us to Patsy Rotenburg’s Second Circle model of communication and connection, which maps in many ways onto improv status work. Worth checking out!

If you’ve read my books or this blog, you know that I am a proponent of replacing traditional preordained status at events with a peer model where individual status can and does change from moment to moment. Such participant-driven and participation-rich events provide a fluid-status environment that supports leaders and experts appearing and contributing when appropriate and needed.

Building things together

One of the most wonderful things about improv is the opportunities it gives us to experience what can happen when we build something together with others, something that is a true joint creation that would have been different if any one of its creators had not been present. Improv games provide an environment of mutual support, where players add to what’s currently been created. The addition can be of more detail or deeper focus on some aspect, but the whole glorious edifice only increases in size and complexity over time.

Many improv games provide this experience. One that we enjoyed a lot was three-words-at-a-time poems. We wrote group poems, our only instruction being to read what we received and add to it in a way that seemed true to what had already been written. Sitting in a circle, each of us wrote the first three words of a poem. We then passed our paper to the next person, who wrote three more words and passed the paper on again. Our papers circulated twice around the circle, with the starter of each poem contributing the last three words.

Here’s one we created together:

The Dinner
The cold lasagna sat on the white stool.
Uneaten, unloved.
Unlovable.
No cheese?
What, no noodles?
No meat?
No because too much.
VEGETABLES!
The guests departed, deflated, never to return to my sugarless, soulless party.
My hungry friends
Even hungrier for the lost moment
Of Italian goodness lingered beside
White plates and glasses.
Never host again.

I think the most satisfactory experiences I have designing, producing, and facilitating events occur when every person involved contributes creatively to making the event what it becomes. It feels darn good to be part of something wonderful that a group of people built through their work.

Conclusions

I learned so many important lessons from improv at this workshop. Our five days together passed swiftly. Throughout our time together we had moments of play, joy, seriousness, sadness, intimacy, fun, learning, and much laughter. I love workshops like this because they offer and support a unique experience for each participant—prescribed learning objectives are refreshingly absent, though I am sure that each person (including Ted and Lisa) took away something personally meaningful, valuable, and probably important. I’ve only covered some of what I experienced and enjoyed. I recommend Ted and Lisa’s skillful, supportive, and empathetic workshops to anyone who wants to explore the wonders of improv and mindfulness in a community of not-long-to-be-strangers.

I plan to be back next year; please join me!

P.S.

Ted & Lisa’s excellent Monster Baby Podcast just published David Treadwell’s interview with Ted & Lisa, which was recorded during the workshop. They explain “why they offer these retreats, what the weekend usually covers, and how improv skills can lead to a better life.” They also consider what keeps people from such ways of being in their normal lives and when they can get into the “no” mode. David asks how the retreat can help teachers, business professionals, and those in personal relationships before getting into the rewards and challenges of leading such retreats. Ted and Lisa offer a few specific examples of the kinds of exercises they offer. The podcast closes with a few short testimonials from this year’s participants. And if you keep listening past the apparent end, there’s a hidden bonus track improvised performance from Ted and Lisa!”

Tags: improv, Lisa Rowland, Mindful Play, mindfulness, play, Playful Mind, Ted DesMaisons, workshop| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Lessons for #eventprofs from an improv and mindfulness workshop — Part 1

Monday, June 27th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

Here are some improv and mindfulness lessons from a five-day improv and mindfulness workshop I attended in Maine in 2016.

You had to be there. In this case, “there” was a wonderful five-day improv and mindfulness workshop Mindful Play, Playful Mind, held June 8-13 2016, at Mere Point on the beautiful Maine coast. In this two-part article, I’ll share a little of my experience and takeaways, followed by their relevance to event design (red).

How I got there

Many people think of improv as a form of entertainment. I am fascinated by my experiences of improv as a tool for better living. As Patricia Ryan Madson, a teacher of both workshop leaders, says: “Life is an improvisation.” In addition, I’ve been working for over 40 years (with erratic focus and success) on practicing mindfulness in my daily life. So, when I heard in 2015 that Ted DesMaisons and Lisa Rowland, with whom I’d spent three days at a 2012 beginner’s improv workshop in San Francisco, were offering a workshop on improv and mindfulness, I badly wanted to go. Although that opportunity had to be passed up—PCMA made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: facilitating the 2015 PCMA Education Conference—I made it to the 2016 workshop.

I’m glad I did.

Where I came from

I became interested in improv after short experiences in various workshops during the last 15 years. After a three-day introductory workshop at BATS, I attended two four-day Applied Improvisation Network World Conferences (San Francisco 2012 and Montreal 2015). In Lessons From Improv and other posts I’ve shared how improv shines a powerful light on core practices that improve events. Saying Yes to offers can allow amazing things to happen at conferences, Being Average improves our creativity by focusing on the possibilities inside the box, and Waking Up to the Gifts makes the importance of public and specific appreciations at events obvious.

Looking back, I’ve only one post about mindfulness. Not because it’s less important, but because I find mindfulness hard to write about.

The content and process of Mindful Play, Playful Mind was so rich that I’ll cover only a fraction of what one might learn from participating: the fraction that especially resonated for me at this time in my life. Here goes…

Practice

One of the key gifts I received from the workshop was the gift of practice of improv and mindfulness.

The principles of improv, though easy to grasp, require practice to master. I’m far from mastery. The first time I worked with a fellow participant in a simple game, Ted and Lisa gently pointed out that I blocked her first two offers. (Essentially, I said “no, not that” to what she had suggested about my character and motivations). I noticed that I sometimes say “no” to perfectly appropriate ideas. Improv doesn’t mean accepting anything anyone says to you; rather it is a way to expand a world of possibilities that one might otherwise reject. Practicing saying “yes” over our five days together helped me be more open to saying it in my life.

Each morning, Ted led us through an hour of movement and meditation. During the last ten years, I have had a rather, well let’s just say, sporadic mindfulness practice. On the fourth morning of the workshop, I was so aware of the benefits of daily practice, I determined to start each day henceforth with yoga and meditation. This decision was a surprise to me. It may well turn out to be the most significant change in my life from this workshop. We’ll see.

After we have grasped the basics of event design, mindful practice is how we improve. We become better at noticing what happens and learning from it, more focused on the present, and less distracted by our ego. Improv practice increases our creativity in dealing with the unexpected (turning broken eggs into omelets), makes accepting offers (of assistance and opportunities) easier, and helps us to work better with and support collaborators.

Being appreciated

It was a surprise to me to find during the workshop that I still short-change appreciations from others. I was taught at an early age to feel embarrassed by compliments, applause, or thanks. Though I’m better able to accept these things nowadays, I still feel a certain reticence at accepting these positive affirmations.

Providing private and public appreciations to those who make our events possible is incredibly important. Accepting such appreciations as offers of love, connection, and support is equally important.

improv and mindfulness lessons: Workshop participants Ellen, Nancy, Nahin, Ellena, Wendy, Everlyn, and Adrian with Ted DesMaisons (beard) and Lisa Rowland (scarf) — Workshop participants with Ted DesMaisons (beard) and Lisa Rowland (scarf)

Creating connection with others

Although I had previously spent time with workshop leaders Ted & Lisa, I had never met my fellow participants before. All nine of us spent five days living, playing, and working together. We stayed in an old family home overlooking a stunning Maine estuary and ate meals together. One afternoon we hiked together over Morse Mountain to Seawall Beach. Our workshop was held either outside or in the Mere Point Yacht Club next door 😀.

By the end of our time together, I got to know Ellen, Nancy, Nahin, Ellena, Wendy, and Everlyn better in some ways than our Vermont neighbors (and friends), with whom we’ve shared a driveway for over thirty years. The improv and mindfulness exercises we experienced together allowed us to help each other learn and grow.

Well-designed events can change peoples’ lives through the connections we make during them and the learning and changes that result. What an amazing responsibility and opportunity we have!

There are more improv and mindfulness lessons in Part 2!

Tags: ff0000, improv, Lisa Rowland, Mindful Play, mindfulness, play, Playful Mind, Ted DesMaisons, workshop| Posted in Event design | 1 Comment »

Who owns your event?

Monday, June 20th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

Who owns an event?

Who owns an event? The usual answer to this question is “the event’s sponsors”. They are the people and organizations that decide to hold the event and contribute the resources needed for the event to occur. Sponsors typically define the context, format, scope, and desired outcomes of an event, so they are clearly owners.

But I think there are other plausible answers to this question.

Increasingly we are moving to event models that make participants generators of event value. Conferences that leverage all the expertise in the room, rather than the contributions of a few experts. Meetings that become what the participants want and need them to be, autofocusing on the topics and questions that are of genuine relevance, rather than sessions predefined six months in advance.

Yes, sponsors define an event’s boundaries and make it happen (for which we should all be grateful). But at participant-driven and participation-rich meetings, the shaping and contributions that participants provide are crucial for the event’s success. Without this input, such events are worth very little, so isn’t it fair to say that, under these circumstances, the participants are owners of the event as well?

Another way to think about event ownership

There’s another way to think of event ownership. As facilitator Dan Newman points out:

“…participants enter an event owning practically nothing, but they come out the other end owning a powerful experience constructed of things they’ve seen, heard or heard themselves say.”
—Dan Newman, From the Front of the Room: Notes on Facilitation for Experienced Practitioners

If we think of an event as the thing that happened between the moments when the first attendee arrived and the last person left, we are ignoring the changes in the knowledge, viewpoints, and connections, and the subsequent outcomes that the event created. The participants not only own their event experience but also the consequences of their participation. The changes that result loop back on the event’s sponsors, influencing their future choices. Thus, participants are event owners because, to some extent, they control what happens next.

Conclusion

So, who owns an event? I like the idea that both sponsors and participants are the owners of events. By consciously bringing participants into the realm of ownership, we widen the community that makes the event what it is, and this benefits all the players.

Tags: Dan Newman, event ownership, owners, ownership, participants, sponsors| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Reduce China-style self-censorship at your meetings

Monday, June 13th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

The Chinese government runs a massive online censorship program. Why mention this on an event design blog? Well, the most effective aspect of China’s online censorship regime illustrates what happens when you don’t incorporate covenants (aka agreements) into your meetings. You get self-censorship at meetings.

Self-censorship at meetings

Tech In Asia explains:

“Imagine being near a steep cliff. During the day, when you can see clearly, you might walk right up to the edge to take in the view. But at night or during a thick fog, you’re probably going to steer well clear of the cliff’s edge to ensure that you don’t accidentally misjudge where you are and tumble to your death.

China’s vaguely-defined web content rules and inconsistent censorship enforcement work the same way as the fog near a cliff: since people can’t see exactly where the edge is, they’re more likely to stay far away from it, just in case. There’s no toeing the line, because nobody knows exactly where the line is. So instead of pushing the envelope, many people choose to censor themselves.”
—The cleverest thing about China’s internet censorship, Tech In Asia

The value of meeting covenants

As I’ve explained elsewhere, good agreements publicly clarify the freedoms that attendees have at an event, like the freedom to speak one’s mind, ask questions, and share feelings. Agreeing to such freedoms individually and as a group at the start of a meeting dissipates ambiguity about behavior. The cliff edge dividing acceptable from unacceptable behavior becomes much clearer. Participants are no longer uncertain about what is O.K. to say and do.

Once attendees feel safe to share, empowered to ask questions, and express what they think and feel, amazing things happen. I’ve been using explicit covenants for fifteen years. In my experience, effective learning, meaningful connection, engagement, and resulting community all noticeably increase.

Include covenants to reduce China-style self-censorship

If you omit group agreements at your meetings, you default to an environment where participants will self-censor their behavior. Given that it takes about five minutes to explain and obtain agreement commitment, it’s crazy to miss out on one of the simplest and most effective things you can do to improve your meeting.

Don’t just read this, nod your head, and forget about it. The next time you run a meeting, introduce agreements at the start (Chapter 18 of The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action has full details) and discover the power of agreements for yourself and your attendees!

Bonus insight on another relationship between censorship and meeting design: How you may be treating your meeting evaluations like a Chinese censor.

Photo attribution: Flickr user zedzap

Tags: censorship, China, covenants, explicit ground rules, ground rules, self-censorship| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Feedback Frames—a low-tech tool for anonymous voting

Monday, June 6th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

Jason Diceman is developing a novel tool for anonymous voting — Feedback Frames.

Unlike high-tech audience response systems, Feedback Frames are refreshingly low-tech (no computers, clickers, smartphones, power, or technical support required). One graphic explains the tool:

Although I tend to prefer public and semi-anonymous techniques for the participatory voting I use extensively in my facilitation practice, Jason’s approach is a refreshing alternative to the complex (and typically expensive) high-tech ARS methods routinely used for anonymous voting at meetings.

Jason created an even lower-tech (free!) tool Idea Rating Sheets in 2004 (originally called “Dotmocracy”) to “make it easier to find agreements in large groups”. He has been a Senior Public Consultation Coordinator for the City of Toronto since 2010. Jason is working to crowdfund his invention. His FAQ should answer all your questions. Visit his website to learn more.

Tags: anonymous voting, Feedback Frames, Jason Diceman| Posted in Event design, NoRepost, Resources | 3 Comments »

An introduction to participatory voting—Part 3: Public, semi-anonymous, and anonymous voting

Tuesday, May 31st, 2016 by Adrian Segar

In the first two parts of this series on participatory voting at events, I introduced the concept and compared low-tech and high-tech approaches. Now, let’s explore an issue that should (but often doesn’t) determine the specific voting methods we choose: knowledge about how other participants have voted. In this post, I’ll explain the differences between public, semi-anonymous, and anonymous voting and when you should use them.

High-tech methods typically default to anonymous voting: i.e. we have no information on anyone’s individual vote. Audience response systems (ARSs) — which combine an audience voting method such as a custom handheld device, personal cell phone/smartphone, personal computer, etc. with a matched receiver and software that processes and displays responses — are so commonly used to provide anonymous voting at meetings today that many event planners and attendees are unaware that public voting is a simple and, in many cases, more useful alternative.

Public voting

Public voting methods allow a group to see the individuals who have voted and how they voted. (For a list of anonymous and public participatory voting techniques, see Part 2 of this series.)

In Part 1 of this series, I explained why using public voting techniques is key to creating truly participatory voting:

“Allowing participants to discover those who agree or disagree with them or share their experience efficiently facilitates valuable connections between participants in ways unlikely to occur during traditional meetings. Giving group members opportunities to harness these techniques for their own discoveries about the group can further increase engagement in the group’s purpose.”

It’s also worth noting that public voting offers follow-up opportunities to uncover group resources, interest, and commitment on specific action items from individual participants.

Anonymous voting

Anonymous voting informs us about a group’s collective opinion but hides individual opinions. As mentioned in Part 2, anonymous voting is certainly appropriate when we are exploring deeply personal or potentially embarrassing questions: e.g. “Who has or has had a sexually transmitted disease?” But how often is this necessary? In my experience, the vast majority of questions asked of a group during meeting sessions are not sensitive, and there is real value in participants’ discovery of others with like-minded and opposing views via public voting.

Some argue that anonymous voting is necessary to avoid a bandwagon effect, where people vote in a particular way because other people are doing so, rather than expressing their own opinion. Although no one can divine participants’ true beliefs, a facilitator who creates a safe environment for individuals to express any opinion will minimize groupthink during participatory voting.

For example, when I facilitate The Solution Room, a session that provides just-in-time peer support and answers to a pressing professional challenge, I ask participants to place themselves in the room to show how risky it feels to share the challenge they have chosen. As I do so, I say “I’ve had challenges where I’d be standing over here, and others where I’d be standing over there.” Sharing my experience that any position along the riskiness spectrum might be appropriate for me helps to support and legitimize each participant’s choice.

Semi-anonymous voting

Finally, there’s a form of participatory voting I call semi-anonymous that’s essentially but not perfectly anonymous. Two common examples are dot voting (described in detail in Chapter 49 of The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action) and crowdsourcing techniques involving group posting of written notes on walls or tables. Although in principle, continuously spying on an individual participant could allow observation of specific votes, such surveillance would be pretty obvious, impracticable for multiple participants, and is realistically unlikely to occur in practice.

The next time you need to determine a group’s response to a question, take a moment to consider whether anonymous voting is really necessary. In the majority of cases, you’ll find that public voting is a better choice, allowing participants to learn more about each other while setting the stage for a deeper look at the issues uncovered.

Still have questions about public, semi-anonymous, and anonymous voting? Share them in the comments below!

Photo attribution: Flickr user gpforeducation

Tags: anonymous voting, participatory voting, public voting, semi-anonymous voting| Posted in Event design | 1 Comment »

Participatory voting at events: Part 2—Low-tech versus high-tech voting

Monday, May 23rd, 2016 by Adrian Segar

In Part 1 of this series, I defined participatory voting and we explored the different ways to use it to obtain public information about viewpoints and participants in the room, paving the way for further useful discussions and conversations. Now let’s explore low-tech and high-tech voting solutions.

High-tech voting

There is no shortage of high-tech systems that can poll an audience. Commonly known as ARSs, Student Response Systems (SRSs), or “clickers,” these systems combine an audience voting method—a custom handheld device, personal cell phone/smartphone, personal computer, etc.—with a matched receiver and software that processes and displays responses.

Here are three reasons why high-tech ARSs may not be the best choice for participatory voting:

ARSs necessitate expense and/or time to set up for a group. No-tech and low-tech approaches are low or no cost and require little or no preparation.

Most ARS votes are anonymous; no one knows who has voted for what. When you are using voting to acquire information about participant preferences and opinions, as opposed to deciding between conflicting alternatives, anonymous voting is rarely necessary. (An exception is if people are being asked potentially embarrassing questions.) When a group of people can see who is voting for what (and, with some techniques, even the extent of individual agreement/disagreement), it’s easy to go deeper into an issue via discussion or debate.

Participatory voting techniques involve more movement than pushing a button on an ARS device. This is important, because physical movement improves learning. Some techniques include participant interaction, which also improves learning.

While there are times when low-tech or high-tech voting is the right choice, I prefer no-tech and low-tech techniques for participatory voting whenever possible. No-tech techniques require only the attendees themselves. Low-tech approaches use readily available and inexpensive materials such as paper and pens.

No-tech and low-tech

Wondering what no-tech and low-tech voting techniques can be used for participatory voting? Here’s a list, taken from a glossary of participation techniques covered in detail in my book The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action.

Body/Continuum Voting: See Human Spectrograms.

Card Voting: Provides each participant with an identical set of colored cards that can be used in flexible ways: typically for voting on multiple-choice questions, consensus voting, and guiding discussion.

Dot Voting: A technique for public semi-anonymous voting where participants are given identical sets of one or more colored paper dots which they stick onto paper voting sheets to indicate preferences.

Hand/Stand Voting: In hand voting, participants raise their hands to indicate their answer to a question with two or more possible answers. Stand voting replaces hand raising with standing.

Human Graphs: See Human Spectrograms.

Human Spectrograms: Also known as body voting, continuum voting, and human graphs. A form of public voting that has participants move in the room to a place that represents their answer to a question. Human spectrograms can be categorized as one-dimensional, two-dimensional, or state-change.

Idea swap: A technique for anonymous sharing of participants’ ideas.

One-dimensional Human Spectrograms: Human Spectrograms where participants position themselves along a line in a room to portray their level of agreement/disagreement with a statement or a numeric response (e.g. the number of years they’ve been in their current profession.)

Plus/Delta: A review tool that enables participants to quickly identify what went well at a session or event and what could be improved.

Post It!: A simple technique that employs participant-written sticky notes to uncover topics and issues that a group wants to discuss.

Roman Voting: Roman Voting is a public voting technique for gauging the strength of consensus.

State-change Human Spectrograms: Human Spectrograms where participants move en masse from one point to another to display a change of some quantity (e.g. opinion, geographical location, etc.) over time.

Table Voting: A technique used for polling attendees on their choice from pre-determined answers to a multiple-choice question, and/or for dividing participants into preference groups for further discussions or activities.

Thirty-Five: A technique for anonymously evaluating participant ideas.

Two-dimensional Human Spectrograms: Human Spectrograms where participants position themselves in a two-dimensional room space to display relative two-dimensional information (e.g. where they live with reference to a projected map.)

This ends my exploration of low-tech and high-tech voting solutions. And what are public, semi-anonymous, and anonymous voting? We’ll explain these different voting types and explore when they should be used in the third part of this series.

Tags: body voting, card voting, continuum voting, dot voting, hand/stand voting, human graphs, human spectrograms, idea swap, participatory voting, plus/delta, Post It!, roman voting, table voting, thirty-five, voting| Posted in Event design | 1 Comment »

Asking for help

Monday, May 16th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

Sometimes, the best thing we can do is to ask for help.

I ask for help

I had been fretting for several months on how to move ahead on convening and facilitating more of the participation technique workshops that are dear to my heart. What would the interest be? How would I market them? Which countries and venues should I consider?

The exploratory work involved was daunting. I started some market and venue research in my spare time, but progress was slow. There was so much to do before I could even begin to announce anything.

Finally, I realized I was acting like the person (stereotypically a man, right?) who’s lost and can’t bring himself to ask for directions.

I needed to ask for help.

It was hard for me to get to the point of asking for help. Despite knowing and preaching about the power of networks to create change, I was trained to figure stuff out by myself, and I still often revert to that old mindset. My ingrained instinct is to investigate a situation by looking at possibilities, only finally moving to action once I’ve got a solid plan. Sometimes that’s a good strategy. But sometimes, I need to practice transformational tourism.

Merely looking at [or listening to] something almost never causes change. Tourism is fun, but rarely transformative.

If it was easy, you would have already achieved the change you seek.

Change comes from new habits, from acting as if, from experiencing the inevitable discomfort of becoming.
—Transformation tourism, Seth Godin

I became someone who asks for help. In 30 minutes I wrote a request for assistance on this blog and promoted it through my usual channels on social media: Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and some Facebook event professional groups.

What happened

The results were swift and gratifying.

Within a week I had been contacted by numerous friends and colleagues, and had found several partners who were a wonderful logical fit.

Two weeks later, we began planning workshops in the United States, Canada, and Europe!

I hope I’ve learned something. I hope that next time I’ll be ready to ask for help a little sooner.

How about you? Don’t be like this guy.

Try a new habit.

Ask for help.

You may be amazed at what happens when you do.

Photo attribution: Flickr user marinadelcastell

Tags: asking for help, help, Seth Godin, transformational tourism| Posted in Facilitating Change | No Comments »