Philosophers and scientists have long defined cognition as something done by a single mind. But in January 2023, twenty-eight scientists published a letter to the editor of Cognitive Science that challenges this view of cognition. Rather, they say, “Interaction co-constitutes cognition as a process involving interacting minds. In other words, they believe that interaction is at the heart of cognition.
Here’s the paper: “Beyond Single-Mindedness: A Figure-Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences.”
They go on to describe this new viewpoint as a “figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition.”Mark Dingemanseexplains and illustrates the deliberate use of “figure-ground” as follows:
“Why a figure-ground reversal rather than a ‘paradigm shift’ or an ‘interactive turn’? This is both a nod to the roots of cognitive science and a rhetorical choice: we think of the interactive stance as a perspective — a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists
Is there a hexagon below, or whitespace bounded by circular sectors? Gestalt switches are reversible, but hard to unsee. We want to make interaction ‘hard to unsee’ for @cogsci.”
Interaction is at the heart of cognition—and events!
For decades I’ve been designing meetings that support meaningful interaction to create successful learning and connection. Sadly, integrating interaction into meeting sessions is still the exception rather than the rule at most meetings, which are places where learning is restricted to listening to experts lecturing, and connecting around relevant content is relegated to hallways, meals, and socials.
Such traditional meeting models are based on cognitive learning as something that is done to a set of individual brains.
So I’m heartened to see scientists adopting a view of cognition as something that arises through interactions between people. And it doesn’t surprise me. After all, as the paper points out:
“A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction.” —Mark Dingemanse et al, Beyond Single-Mindedness: A Figure-Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences, Cognitive Science, January 10, 2023
I continue to believe that interaction around meaningful content is at the heart of events. And now there’s a little extra scientific support as well!
As I write this, we are entering the fourth year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been responsible for millions of deaths and long-term disabilities. Many more people are going to die and contract Long COVID. In addition, most current events are still dangerous to attend for people with disabilities and certain chronic illnesses. Under the circumstances, it’s shocking that the meeting industry has developed no widely accepted standards for safer events.
But recently I learned about an effort to create and communicate simple, flexible standards for safer events: The Public Health Pledge.
“We’re starting our day full of hope!
Sometimes it feels lonely being COVID-conscious in a world that’s desperate to forget anything has changed.
But you are not alone. Far more people are concerned about COVID than let on. Sometimes they don’t speak up because of social pressure or fear of retaliation from an employer.
Started by Josh Simmons, an advocate for free and open-source software and a community organizer, The Public Health Pledge is both:
A public pledge by those involved in attending and organizing meetings to commit to meetings that have robust health and safety policies; and
An ongoing effort to define an “Event Badging Standard”: a set of simple but meaningful grades for health and safety protocols in place at any event to share with attendees.
The Public Health Pledge
The Public Health Pledge is short and simple.
Notice that the active measures used at an event are not specified in the Public Health Pledge. That’s the purpose of the other part of this initiative, the development of an Event Badging Standard.
The Event Badging Standard
The prototype Event Badging Standard includes six badges. Each badge represents a key health and safety category, and has a set of three possible grades that “indicate the quality of the protocols in place”:
A “Robust Policy” grade indicates that the event’s policies represent good practice as understood at the time this standard was written, and will be enforced.
An “Efforts Made” grade indicates that efforts are being made by the organizers, but there are factors that may increase risk for some attendees.
A “No Policy” grade indicates that meaningful policies have not been implemented.
My feedback on the current [version 2023-01] Event Badging Standard
I like these standards. And we need ’em.
But the elephant in the room is the mask exception for “attendees who are actively eating or drinking”.
Yes, this exception could be “robust” when outdoors or with excellent ventilation/filtering in place.
But in practice, event social activities are when most airborne infection occurs.
(Also, dancing while wearing masks is rare in my experience, so I wonder if “robust” would apply to many events with an evening social with music.)
I would define “robust” masking as meaning:
EITHER making outdoor eating and drinking available
OR providing assurances of indoor air quality to ASHRAE recommendations (or international equivalents).
I have offered both options at in-person events I’ve designed/facilitated during the last three years. Many participants thanked me for doing this.
One small addition: having CO2 meters in key rooms and briefly explaining their readings at the event’s start helps with this kind of transparency. [Note: Belgium now requires CO2 meters in all public spaces.] Perhaps add this to the ventilation grade?
I sent this feedback to Josh. He immediately thanked me and added these ideas to the notes for the next revision.
Why the meeting industry needs health and safety event badge standards
We’ve been (rightly) fixated on COVID as a serious threat to human health and safety since 2020.
Besides the health impact of pandemics on all of us, I believe that the vast majority of event professionals these days want to create events that are inclusive and welcoming of diversity. If you do, Gina Häußge explains succinctly why we must make our meetings safe places for all attendees.
“For the record, I’m of the opinion that we can’t call our events inclusive and welcoming of diversity when we exclude people with disabilities or chronic illnesses (or their caregivers), who can’t risk getting infected by an airborne pathogen that is still in a pandemic state, even though the collective consciousness has decided to mimic ostriches, put their heads in the sand and pretend it’s 2019.” —Gina Häußge, February 1, 2023, Mastodon toot
At a minimum, we owe our attendees clear information about the safety protocols we have in place at every event. Published event badge standards provide this information for attendees. What they decide is up to them. But at least such standards give them the information they need to make an informed decision.
Meeting professionals rarely talk about status and power issues. This is unfortunate because the ways that status and power manifest at meetings matter. Why? Because a majority of those who attend most meetings have little say over what happens at them. Typical meeting formats are rigid, and attendees play largely circumscribed roles.
So, let’s explore the roles of status and power at meetings.
Every meeting has a structure
As Jo Freeman wrote half a century ago, every meeting has a structure.
“Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved.”
—Jo Freeman aka Joreen, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, 1972
Meetings usually adopt traditional structures that attendees seldom question in public. Such structures contain status and power imbalances that can often reduce the effectiveness of the meeting. Meetings that are consciously designed to best fit the needs and wants of all the stakeholders are rare.
Hierarchy isn’t (necessarily) a problem
When we look at a meeting in progress, it’s usually easy to spot any hierarchy that’s present. For example:
The chairperson sits at the end of the table.
Speakers, board members, and panelists face everyone else.
Name badges signal high-status roles.
Only certain people get a microphone.
Hierarchy leads to overt or covert status differences. However, the existence of hierarchical or status differences isn’t necessarily a problem. A high-status, experienced chairperson, for example, may guide a board meeting through a complex agenda far more effectively than if the gathering is structured as a free-floating discussion. Similarly, a clear interactive presentation from an experienced expert to an audience of novices can be an effective way to share important information about a relevant topic.
However, hierarchy frequently impedes meeting effectiveness when high-status members use the power imbalance between them and other attendees to impose a meeting structure that suits their purposes.
Here’s a brief overview of each of these kinds of power dynamics from a meetings perspective.
Power-within
My work is about designing meetings that support power-within for every attendee. There are three overlapping sets of tools for this: agreements, facilitation that supports participants’ freedoms and agreements, and status-leveling processes like The Three Questions.
I go into a lot more detail in my books about why these tools are so important. Check out The Power of Participation for deeper explanations.
Power-with
Maximizing power-with is an obvious force for good for meeting participants (unless, perhaps, you are in a minority with power and want to maintain the status quo.) We are social creatures, and it feels good when we are listened to and experience being truly heard by others—even if they respectfully disagree with us. Consequential bonuses that provide additional joy include discovering agreement, making connections, and moving to action.
Power-over
Power-over is the most common power dynamic at work in meetings.
When power-over meeting dynamics are appropriate and relatively benign
Specifically, power-over dynamics can work reasonably well for meetings when a high-status leader:
Has significantly more expertise and experience than anyone else present;
Is good at communicating what’s necessary via broadcast; and
Is benevolent.
An example would be a high-level, experienced bureaucrat who has the job of teaching the implications of a complex set of new tax regulations to a group of customer service employees who answer tax questions.
Even in situations like this, reducing perceived status can improve the meeting. For example, creating a relaxed and supportive environment for questions and discussion plus breaking regularly into small groups to process learning will improve adult learning better than lecturing followed by testing.
Power-over meeting dynamics are often toxic
But if you’ve ever had low status at a meeting—and who hasn’t?—you’ve likely often experienced toxic power-over dynamics. For example:
Teachers publicly humiliate students in class.
Bosses pressure subordinates to make unwise or unfair decisions at meetings or avoid uncomfortable topics.
Arrogant people interrupt others and monopolize discussions at conference sessions.
What’s been fascinating to me during my decades of designing and facilitating meetings is how good meeting design can minimize power differentials between participants, and invariably just about everyone discovers that the meeting improves for them! (Even including the vast majority of the folks with more power!)
Conclusions about power dynamics at meetings
Two essential things meeting designers and facilitators should do to create effective meetings is to support power-within and maximize power-with for participants. Do these well and you will simultaneously reduce the deleterious effects of power-over at your events.
This post was inspired by Richard D. Bartlett‘s article Hierarchy Is Not the Problem…It’s the Power Dynamics. Richard covers work relationships while I have focused on applying his analysis to meetings. Richard also includes suggested steps towards healthy power dynamics at work—well worth reading!
Last week I shared five ways explicit communication improves meetings. If we lived in a world where sharing a clear message guaranteed that every recipient received it and took it to heart—well, our lives would be a lot less complicated.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world. So here’s a guide to explicit communication mechanics that increase the likelihood that people receive and act on your messages.
Explicit communication mechanics summary
To maximize the likelihood that people receive and act on a message you send:
Determine the best communication channel(s)
Choose the best time(s) to communicate
Make sure your message is clear
Find out whether your message has been received
Repeat messages appropriately.
Determine the best communications channel(s)
Think about the best channel(s) to communicate your message. Here are some examples.
You have important information to convey to attendees, presenters, or exhibitors before an event. You might use email, bulk texting, in-app messaging, website updates, or even social media.
You’re an emcee on stage and you need to remind folks about the time and place of the evening social. You’ll probably speak to your audience. (But perhaps you’ll sing, or use physical comedy!)
The meeting schedule changes mid-event. You might use electronic signage, app push messaging, or hallway announcements to let people know.
Before you choose from available channels, consider timing and repeat messaging factors, as described below.
Choose the best time(s) to communicate
A mistake I’ve made more than once is to try to share information at the end of a session while people are starting to leave. Typically I’ll indicate that the session is over and then remember there’s an announcement I forgot to make. Unfortunately, listening to me becomes a low priority when attendees have already turned their attention to standing up and thinking about where they’ll go next.
To maximize explicit communication in such circumstances, what I try to remember to do is:
Preparing recipients to receive a message makes it more likely they’ll receive it. So, prepare attendees at the start of the session. (“At the end of this session I have an important announcement about XYZ.“).
Make a clear statement right at the end of the session. (“We’re going to wrap up, but first please listen carefully to this important announcement…“)
Part of a communications plan, therefore, includes choosing the best times to prep folks for receiving and then delivering your messages.
Having a plan is important, but not necessarily sufficient. You also need to monitor the real-time environment and be prepared to alter your plan. As a facilitator, I sometimes change the processes I’m using to meet uncovered participants’ needs. Or a portion of a session may take more or less time than expected. When such things happen, you may need to change the timing of your communications on the fly.
Make sure your message is clear
Obviously, if people don’t understand your message your communication will fail. Whenever possible, test the clarity of a message in advance. For example, I try to test instructions I’ve developed for new group work processes with a small group before using them with 600 people. And don’t forget that messaging isn’t restricted to verbal communication. I remember a maze-like conference center that had a totally inadequate printed floor plan. Even though I spent the day before the event familiarizing myself with the layout, I still had a hard time figuring out how to get from one room to the next. Not surprisingly, many attendees got lost and were late for sessions during the meeting.
In addition, to make sure your message is clear, check for understanding right after delivering it. Saying “Are there any questions?” and giving people enough time to respond before continuing is the least you should do. For maximal communication use Ask, Tell, Ask, where you ask what questions people have, share your answers, and then ask what they understand.
Find out whether your message has been received
One of the best improv exercises I’ve done really brought home the importance of checking whether people have received a message. In 2016, I played the game “You” at a five-day improv retreat held by Mindful Play, Playful Mind. Here’s what I wrote about playing “You”, though, like all improv, you have to experience the game to fully get its point.
What the game vividly illustrates is that you have to get people’s full attention before you send a message, and then check with them to make sure they’ve received it. Make sure you do this!
Repeat messages appropriately
Finally, remember that repeating messages appropriately increases the likelihood that people will receive and absorb them. Despite your best efforts, there are countless reasons why folks may miss a message. A potential recipient might be immersed in a side conversation, worrying about a family situation, on a bathroom break, etc. Repeating messages, especially important ones, makes it more likely people will hear or see and act on them.
How often to repeat a message depends on its importance, the environment, and the level of attention at the moment you share it. There’s no right answer. Some people are great at receiving messages; some need to be hit over the head with a stick. In general, it’s better to repeat a message a little too often (with the risk of annoying some) rather than not enough (with the risk that many won’t receive it.)
If available, use multiple channels for your messages. For example, communicate a schedule change with session announcements, in-app messages, and meeting signage. People will generally understand your desire to get the message out in various ways, and it’s more likely people will receive it successfully.
Nevertheless, maximizing the likelihood that people will receive and act on your messages at meetings is important. I hope that this post gives you some ideas for improving communications at your meetings.
Do you know other ways to improve explicit communication at meetings? Share them in the comments below!
When we get together and talk there are sometimes things best left unsaid. But often, explicit communication — saying or writing what’s needed to guide or influence desired behavior — improves matters over staying silent or beating around the bush. Here are five examples of how explicit communication improves meetings.
1—Tell attendees how your meeting socials will be social!
Want to make your meeting “socials” actually social? Don’t just throw a party with loud music. Like many attendees, I love to dance (when the music’s right). But some people don’t; they want to socialize by talking with others. And most people don’t want to dance non-stop for an entire party.
So attendees need somewhere to talk. And unless they possess excellent hearing, conversing with a colleague while Heroes plays from a monster speaker ten feet away is, well, challenging.
I’ve been at too many event parties where loud music was inescapable. They probably contributed to my current need for hearing aids in group settings. These days I often pass on event parties because I can’t hear anyone over the music.
Meeting planners can make me (and many other attendees) happier by giving us somewhere quiet nearby where we can escape and talk whenever we want. Many events do this—but few tell attendees they have the option!
A little explicit pre-party communication will improve your meeting. “Hey, if you want to talk as well as party, take a few steps and enjoy the comfy sofas in the quiet and elegant LuxeTime lounge!” will be music to many ears.
I’ll be there!
TIP: Many people love to dance but don’t want to get any deafer. The solution: provide (sponsor branded?) earplugs! And, tell attendees in advance they’ll be available.
2—Provide and promote places for people to talk
Conference stakeholders who are serious about maximizing connection at their events provide plenty of places besides the hallways to talk and network. Whenever possible, include appropriate furnishings to make these spaces attractive places for people to connect. Then improve your meeting by documenting, promoting, and encouraging people to use your venue’s quiet spaces.
Think creatively about how to do this. For example, session rooms are often vacant at times. Distribute a “quiet meeting spaces” schedule to attendees so they know where and when they can arrange meetings or go on the spur of the moment. And make sure your room signage advertises these spaces to attendees walking by.
3—Frame exemplary interaction between sponsors/exhibitors, and attendees
Sponsors and exhibitors want to meet potential new customers and strengthen existing relationships. Attendees typically want to find suppliers who can solve current problems and meet their needs. For this to happen, these groups need to interact, typically at trade shows, sessions where suppliers lead or contribute, and meeting socials.
We’re all familiar with this dance, but some meetings implement it better than others.
Attendees, especially when they comprise a minority, can be profoundly irritated by overexposure to suppliers. Examples include sessions that are primarily product or service pitches and socials where attendees have little opportunity to talk alone with each other. Sometimes attendees want “attendee-only” sessions where they can talk frankly about supplier experiences.
Getting win-win interactions between attendees and suppliers requires explicit communication with both groups before or at the start of the event.
What suppliers need to hear
Clearly explain to suppliers before the event, that they’ll do best if they don’t aggressively pitch their products and services. Smart suppliers already know this, but there always seem to be some who haven’t gotten the message. In particular, ban sales pitches on stage. Require suppliers who are presenting to describe in advance how their content will educate session attendees appropriately.
If the event is small (and most meetings are small meetings) consider holding a short session for all tradeshow vendors, allowing each supplier a minute at most to pitch their offerings to attendees. Encourage attendees to be there by holding the session right before the tradeshow opens. I’ve found that suppliers and attendees appreciate such sessions and they reduce the likelihood that annoying pitching will occur at other times.
What attendees need to hear
Attendees may really appreciate some meeting sessions that exclude suppliers so participants can have candid discussions about their supplier choices. If your event includes such sessions, let attendees know in advance! (And, of course, make arrangements to ensure that suppliers don’t attend.)
4—Improve the effectiveness of technical checks
By now, we’ve all had to suffer online presenters who:
Look terrible; or
Are largely inaudible; or
Never show up due to “technical difficulties”.
Event producers can minimize these serious defects by holding technical checks beforehand. If only it was so simple!
On a recent weekly Event Tech chat led by Brandt Krueger, we discussed the knotty problem of getting online presenters to do technical checks before the event. Common issues were presenters who:
Ignore or don’t show up for the appointment.
Turn up and inform you that their session’s equipment/location, won’t be the same as what they’re currently on with you.
Say “Don’t waste my time — I’ve done this a million times before!”
Are eager to be “checked” but then want an hour of advice on their setup.
How can explicit communication help with these issues?
To minimize no-shows, put the requirement for a tech check in presenter contracts.
Also include in the presenter contract that the tech check must be held with the same equipment & location the presenter will be using at showtime. (Yes, sometimes this is impossible, but at least the production crew can be warned in advance and schedule extra time to test before the presenter goes live.)
For the self-proclaimed experts, tell them it will only take a few minutes (if everything is fine). Tell them that you want them to be seen and heard at their very best, and you’re here to help. Be prepared, if anything needs fixing, to quickly share what the presenter can do. (Brandt showed us a rule of thirds overlay with an oval for the ideal head position to speedily and gently improve a presenter’s video.)
And for the newbie presenter who wants you to give a free lengthy consult, let them know you’ve only got, say, 15 minutes for the appointment.
There are no guarantees, but explicit communications like these will likely make your online event run smoother.
5—Include explicit meeting agreements
I’ve left the best until the end. The most important way to improve meetings with explicit communications is by creating explicit attendee agreements (aka covenants or ground rules) at the start of an event.
I’ve written extensively about the importance of agreements and how to use them in my books and on this blog (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Check out these resources to learn more.
But wait, there’s more!
Stay tuned for a post on the mechanics of explicit communications next week!
HT to Brandt Krueger and Glenn Thayer for sparking some of the ideas in this post in a couple of weekly Event Tech chats! (Join us on Zoom, Fridays, noon Eastern Time. We’re a friendly bunch!)
Unlike Disneyland, Leica’s watch is “a souvenir of a feeling, not the creator“.
“The crappy t-shirt you bought at your favorite musician’s concert is a souvenir, but they shouldn’t count on that as their legacy or the engine of their growth.” —Seth Godin, Extensions and souvenirs
Each Disney theme park has a different conceptual focus that differentiates it from the others. For example, Epcot has a “World’s Fair” theme, Hollywood Studios revisits the movie universe, and Animal Kingdom is built around zoology.
Park-specific Disney souvenirs complement and strengthen attendees’ experience at each park, rather than being an afterthought.
Extending your event brand
Similarly, to successfully extend your event brand you need to design appropriate additive and new experiences into it over time. Having a new lineup every year of speakers at conferences, or different decor and F&B at special events is not enough. Providing souvenirs will do little to fix the event in attendees’ minds if their experience is essentially one they have had multiple times before.
It’s hard to create genuinely new experiences for special events like galas, life celebrations, and incentive programs. (Hey, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.) The JKWeddingDance, invented in 2009, became a fun and novel format for Western weddings, but such innovations are rare. It’s not surprising that special events rely largely on creative decor, production, and F&B in an attempt to make the event memorable.
But conferences, where people come to learn and connect, are a different matter. There are many powerful, appropriate, little-used formats available besides lectures, panels, breakouts, and socials. I’ve written books about them. You can fulfill your event’s objectives by incorporating these appropriate formats into your meetings, creating unique experiences worth remembering.
So don’t serve up the same stew of event formats year after year. Event innovation? Or same-old, same-old? It’s your choice. To extend your event brand, choose innovative formats, so those souvenir T-shirts will become something that people will hang onto for years!
The other day, a client booked an hour with me to discuss ways to improve their conference. Not much time, but enough for us to uncover and for me to suggest plenty of significant improvements.
Reflecting on our conversation afterward, I realized that all my recommendations involved six fundamental processes that, when implemented effectively, can make any conference better.
Using participant agreements.
The Three Questions.
Pair/trio share.
Fishbowl.
A personal introspective.
A group spective.
So here’s a brief introduction to each of these core processes. Each section includes suggested links and resources to learn more.
Participant agreements help to create an intimate and safe conference environment. They set the stage for collaboration and participation because they give people permission and support for sharing with and learning from each other
I’ve used the six pictured above for many years. You can read more about creating attendee safety and intimacy through agreements—and the benefits for your meetings—in Chapter 17 of The Power of Participation.
The Three QuestionsUltimately, there are three key things that conference attendees want to know about each other. As this post explains, they want to know about:
Attendees’ relevant pasts that bring them to the meeting;
What people personally want to learn and happen at the meeting; and
The valuable experience and expertise that’s available from others in the room.
I’ve covered the value and how to run The Three Questions in all three of my books, but the latest and most up-to-date description is in Chapter 18 of Event Crowdsourcing.
And check out this video (transcript included) where I explain The Three Questions with the help of my friends at Endless Events.
The Three Questions typically take 60-90 minutes. When you add it to a one-day or longer conference, it will significantly deepen participant connections made and strengthened during the event that follows.
Pair/trio share
Any conference session that doesn’t regularly use pair share (or trio share) is missing out on the simplest and easiest tool I know to improve learning and connection during the session. (Okay, if you’re running lightning talks, Pecha Kucha, or Ignite, you get a pass.)
The technique is simple: after pairing participants up and providing a short period for individual thought on an appropriate topic, each pair member takes a minute in turn to share their thoughts with their partner. Read this post to learn why you should use pair share liberally throughout an event. For more details, refer to Chapter 38 of The Power of Participation.
Fishbowl
Every good conference includes participant discussions (aka breakouts). The single most effective way to facilitate a productive discussion that prevents anyone from monopolizing the conversation is the fishbowl format. (Which you can also use online.)
[TIP: You can use fishbowls to great effect in panel discussions too! Here’s how I do it.]
Fishbowls are flexible formats that can be adapted to the available time and the number of participants. Learn more about them in Chapter 42 of The Power of Participation.
A personal introspective
Much of the learning that occurs during a traditional conference is wasted because participants don’t have the time or opportunity to consolidate and integrate personal learning into their future life and work. Though a personal introspective takes about an hour to run, it’s the single best way I know to maximize the learning and future outcomes of an event. I recommend you use one at the end of any multi-day conference.
Refer to this introduction, or Chapter 57 of The Power of Participation, for complete details.
A group spective
Every conference I design and facilitate has a final session that I call a group spective. The personal introspective described above allows participants to review what they have personally learned and to determine what they consequently want to change in their lives. A group spective provides a time and a place to make this assessment of the past, present, and potential future collectively.
The design of a group spective depends on the goals and objectives of the preceding event. These days, I invariably start with a beautifully simple technique, Plus/Delta (see Chapter 56 of The Power of Participation), in which participants first publicly share their positive experiences of the conference. When that’s done, they share any changes they think would improve the event if it were held again.
Plus/Delta is an elegant tool for quickly uncovering a group’s experience of a conference. I’ve run them for hundreds of people in thirty minutes. (Some groups take longer; your experience may vary!) A Plus/Delta usually has an immediate emotional impact, drawing the group together right at the end of the event.
[TIP: A variant, action Plus/Delta, is a great tool for a group to determine and commit to group action outcomes uncovered at a conference.]
Conclusion
It’s best to think of these six core processes as building blocks that can be used in multiple ways. Combining them appropriately enables you to create a customized, optimal process to meet different goals. A great example is using two pair shares around a fishbowl to create what I call a fishbowl sandwich: an incredibly effective way to create very large group discussions around a meaty topic.
It’s also helpful to see these processes as parts of the conference arc, which is how I envision the overall flow of a participant-driven and participation-rich meeting.
One final point. When appropriately incorporated into a well-designed meeting, these six core fundamental processes can make any conference better. However, for maximum effectiveness, it’s essential to use them in a consistent manner.
For example, participant agreements are often useless, if not counterproductive, if conference and session facilitators don’t support them. Similarly, telling attendees they’ll have the opportunity to participate in their learning and then feeding them a diet of broadcast-style lectures will not be well received. In fact, competent facilitation is a prerequisite for these processes to be successful. (Yes, I’m here to help 😀.)
Software testers do peer conferences right! (They even call them a peer conference, rather than unconference, a term I don’t like.) As evidence of software tester conference awesomeness, I offer three examples below. But first…
…a short history of the peer conference
I first designed and convened what I called a “peer conference” in 1992 for a group of IT managers at small schools that eventually became known as edACCESS.
During my 20+ years as an IT consultant and software developer, I got to know a delightful international crowd of software testers: those all-important people responsible for the impossible task of making sure that software works. After I talked about my meeting design work with pioneer tester James Bach at the 2004 Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, the testing community somehow adopted the term peer conference for their get-togethers.
My code development days are long gone. I miss hanging out with the folks I got to know at these events. (Though I’m still in touch with some of them.) Regardless, peer conferences in the world of software testing are still alive and thriving!
And now…
Three examples of how software testers do peer conferences right
Here are some illustrative extracts from Lisi’s post.
Keeping participants safe
Feeling safe is an important psychological requirement for people in any situation, and conferences are no exception (1, 2, 3). Lisi shares another participant’s experience:
Step 1 before entering #SoCraTes2022 ✅ Organizers really do make everything to make everybody feel safe. Code of conduct, inclusive language, Conference Buddy,photo policy.. pic.twitter.com/9V1S109OaO
— Martin (he/him) (@md42) August 25, 2022
Providing a welcoming and supportive environment for first-time participants
SoCraTes 2022 included a Foundation Day “with fewer people and hence a smaller crowd to get used to. A day that covered fundamental topics without them being too basic, so I learned a lot even with topics I knew about. A day where we had a schedule set in advance, which took away the uncertainty of what would happen. A day to get to know people a bit already.”
Notice how this optional first day used more conventional session formats to make it easier for first-time attendees to integrate into the existing community.
“Over dinner, I realized I was not the only one joining this conference for the first time. Later on, we realized lots of people were new joiners indeed, based on recommendations they chose to give this conference a try. Was really great to see.
In the beginning, things were still a bit new, strange and even stiff; as it often is for me these days when suddenly seeing lots of people in real life. Within a short period of time I could loosen up, though. The more people I got to know, the more I relaxed and felt at ease.”
A participation-rich session format — World Café — was introduced at the end of Foundation Day
The World Café supplied an appropriate introduction and transition to the Open Space format used during the rest of the conference.
“To set the scene, a World Café was hosted by the wonderful Juke, getting all of us connected to SoCraTes and each other. How it worked? We had three rounds, a new question each round. For each group, one stays at the same place while all others look for a new group to join. The one who stays welcomes the new people and shares what the previous group had talked about. Usually this is supported by taking notes and drawing on flip charts or similar means.”
Open Space
SoCraTes 2022 used the participant-driven Open Space format to determine what sessions participants wanted to hold. Though Open Space is just one of the formats you can use to create participant-driven and participation-rich meetings, it’s probably the most well-known and is often an appropriate process to use.
“In short: we build the agenda we want to see! And that’s what happened. It’s fascinating how you can really trust in the system. The queues to briefly present the proposed topics were really long, and the emerging schedule looked amazing. So many awesome topics…”
Session leaders used a wide variety of participative formats
Check out Lisi’s post for descriptions of many appropriate innovative session formats, including ask me anything, brainstorming, blind ensemble programming, the pipeline game, exploring feelings while reading code, a Code Retreat, and a retrospective.
Some closing insights
About listening and learning…
Today at #SoCraTes2022 I sat in a session and learned Scratch from a 11yo girl. And I was not the only one. Magic can happen people – you just gotta let it.
Also proves that no matter how junior, you can and will learn something from anyone if you only take the time to listen.
Phew, what an amazing time my first on-site edition of #SoCraTes2022 had been! ✨ So much to digest and follow-up on, lots of inspiration and confidence gained, and best of all: a newfound strong connection with this wonderful welcoming community. Thank you everyone! ❤
“The entire conference felt like a version of the world that could exist. Many small and large customs help people to get along better with each other. It starts with the name tags alone: take off the name tag if you’re too introverted to talk to people right now. A red tape means you don’t want to be photographed. The name tags are magnetic and hold the creative badges that people use to announce their pronouns – with a lot of artistic flair if you like.”
—Eric, SoCraTes 2022 — a conference report [translated from German]
Compare the innovation and excitement at SoCraTes 2022 with just about any other conference you’ve attended. Can you see why software testers like Lisi think that peer conferences rock?!
2. The Unexpo Experiment
Here’s another example from a software testing peer conference, TestBash Brighton 2018. The conference designers invented a way to create “highly engaging, interactive, and fun” poster sessions. Check out my post that describes this “excellent example of how to invent, explore, evaluate, and improve new meeting formats”.
3. A free guide to creating peer conferences
Want to create a peer conference, but don’t want to buy any of my excellent books on this topic? (Hey, you can buy all three for just $49.99, but that’s OK 😀.) No problem, the Association for Software Testing published an excellent free introductory guide to creating peer conferences. Learn more about it, and download it here.
Final thoughts
I love and respect the software testing community because its practitioners think carefully and seriously about how to design their conferences. And then they implement and test their innovative designs, discovering what works and what doesn’t while also being open to the joy and excitement of the unexpected. A beautiful mixture of serious exploration, learning, and fun.
That’s the way to improve meetings!
Image attribution: #SoCraTes2022 peer conference photo by Markus Tacker
Though I don’t teach college anymore, I’m interested in educational class design because a class is a meeting. And much of what we can do to design great meetings is applicable to college classes too.
Sadly, I was disappointed. Not so much by the information presented but more by the way it was done. Talking about incorporating active learning, interaction, and participation into college classes is great. But talking does little to change the behavior of those listening. The speakers didn’t model what they were preaching during their talk!
The webinar platform and opening
The two-hour webinar was hosted on Zoom. It used a hybrid format with about 100 people present in person and 800 online. Chat was disabled, so online attendees could only interact via Zoom’s Q&A function. The presenters used Mentimeter for (two, I think) online polls.
Two hours of 900 people’s time adds up to 1,800 person-hours allotted to this webinar. Here’s a summary of my observations, plus suggestions on how the organizers could have improved the experience.
The webinar started 6 minutes late
Starting late is disrespectful and provides a poor model for what the “new college classroom” should be like. 90 attendee hours wasted! The meeting stakeholders could have done two small things to make it far more likely that the webinar would start on time:
1. Include two times in the meeting invitation. The time when the meeting will open, and the time when the meeting will start.
For example: “We’ll open the room and the Zoom meeting at 14:45 EDT, and start promptly at 15:00 EDT.”
2. To improve the meeting start experience further, let people know what (if anything) will be happening between the open and start time of the meeting.
For example: “Arrive a little early, and chat with our presenters before the meeting starts!”
See this article for more information about starting meetings on time.
Aaagh: The webinar began with 25 minutes of broadcast information!
First up was the Executive Director of the Futures Initiative, who thanked the sponsors and introduced the Chancellor and Provost of CUNY. She didn’t take too long, but the Chancellor and Provost were a different story. In total, attendees sat through twenty-five minutes of thank-yous, congratulations, and enthusiasm about the book and presenters that added nothing of value to the webinar. During this segment, I tweeted:
Watching the #newcollegeclassroom webinar. Over twenty minutes have been spent on this two-hour session, and we’re still on the introductions! With 800 attendees, that’s 300 person-hours wasted so far. I hope this is not representative of A New College Classroom.
“a frame you hear in lots of non-academic circles something like nothing changes in academia.
People outside of the academic world think we are stuck in old methodologies”
Sadly, this webinar is validating that frame.
— Adrian Segar (@ASegar) September 7, 2022
The irony of the current #newcollegeclassroom webinar speaker describing the importance of participation in the classroom where no participation has occurred for 30 minutes.
Introductions and thanks can be shared effectively in a few sentences. If attendees want to know more, they can easily find it on the web. The entire introduction could have easily been covered in five minutes at the most.
At this point, a quarter of the allocated webinar time had passed, and the presenters hadn’t even appeared yet! 450 attendee hours wasted.
Finally, the presenters appeared!
#newcollegeclassroom presenters from @FuturesED
Finally, the presenters of the #newcollegeclassroom webinar appear after 25% of the webinar is over. It sounds like there will be some interactive process now. Thank goodness for that.
The book authors and webinar presenters Christina Katopodis and Cathy N. Davidson began well with the classic participative active learning exercise (think-)pair-share. This was fine for the in-person audience but not made available to the online audience. You can easily run pair (or preferably trio) share in small Zoom meetings using (up to 50) breakouts, but Zoom webinars don’t include this functionality. Still, even an online poll provides some activity for remote audiences.
I always found it difficult to get participants’ attention when closing a pair share, and this happened during the webinar too. As the presenters noted, that’s a good thing! For the in-person audience, this was the moment when they were most engaged during the entire session.
But, inadequate regular interactive processes followed
Need more interaction by this point of the #newcollegeclassroom webinar. Brains are turning off. 70 minutes have passed and we’ve had ONE interactive exercise. Rule of thumb is every ten minutes or less if you want to maintain active learning.
The subsequent webinar content was good, but there was only one more interactive exercise (a poll about what people disliked about teaching). Christina and Cathy switched often—a good thing to do—and told a few stories during the remainder of the webinar. But the rest of the webinar used a lecture format.
And the seminar ended really early for the online audience!
To my surprise, the “presentation” portion of the putative two-hour session ended twenty minutes early, after the presenters had answered some audience questions. The in-person audience could get up and chat with each other, get copies of their books signed, etc. The online audience (the vast majority of those attending) had nothing to do!
The online audience, who had scheduled two hours out of their day to attend the seminar, only received seventy minutes of (potentially) useful content!
This was really unfortunate. I can think of a number of ways that the online audience could have been part of an active learning experience. Instead, I and the other 800 online attendees were dismissed from class early.
This experience indicates to me that the presenters hadn’t thought enough about the online audience’s experience. You need to put yourself in the place of an online attendee and design an experience that is as good for them as possible, rather than relegating them to second-class status. Especially when they comprise the vast majority of your audience!
Content notes
Opening pair share
The presenters started with a pair share on what people liked most about teaching. In-person participants did a pair share, while the online audience took a poll. A majority of the latter said they liked hearing what students had to say and helping them with life skills.
From English research: college teachers talk 87% of the time even in seminar classes.
One of the presenters uses pair share to start every class (as do I).
The presenters summarized the value of active learning. Pair share allows every student to contribute, by sharing their ideas with another student. “You have energy, and you have engagement and involvement, and you have commitment and participation. We know and have metrics on all of this. You learn better. Retain better.”
Thoughts about teaching
They mentioned research that found 20% of students graduate from college without ever having spoken in class unless they were directly called on. “That is a tragedy.”
“Part of what we are doing in this book is finding methods to allow every student to contribute what they have to say. The fancy word for this is metacognition; you think about the course contact and why you are learning and how you are learning what you are doing and that is the lesson that lasts a lifetime.”
“What do our students need from our teaching?”
“We have this idea that higher education hasn’t changed since Socrates and Plato walked around the lyceum. Not true, we saw enormous changes two years ago. In 1 week 18 million students went online during the pandemic. It’s hard to remember we brought higher ed online in a matter of weeks. That was a tremendous accomplishment.”
Active learning
The presenters shared resources on the value of active learning. (There are more in my book, The Power of Participation.)
[Click to see full size.]“[The] study by Scott Freeman is a metastudy of 250 separate studies of active learning and traditional learning using every imaginable metric including standardized testing retention application, et cetera. At the end of the study, Freeman says if this was a pharmaceutical study [traditional lecturing] would be taken off the market. [Active learning] is not radical pedagogy … but the best, most practical way to learn.”
Answering questions
An interesting idea shared by science fiction writer and polymath Samuel Delany.
“[We] need to teach people they are important enough to say what they have to say.”And here he is saying it (starts at 2:42).
Hadn’t heard the Samuel Delany quote before in the #newcollegeclassroom webinar. Like the approach, but it’s critical that participants are prepared so it’s safe — “‘I don’t know’ is an OK and common answer”.
“On average, kids ask [around] twenty questions per hour. When they get to school, they ask three questions per hour. That is staggering. When they come to higher ed, there is all that unlearning that we have to do.”
Providing co-designed options for student assignments and evaluations.
Having students write a question they want to ask toward the end of the class. (I prefer to do this at the start!)
I like to use a closing “exit ticket activity” pair share on lessons learned during the session.
The session closed with the presenters answering some questions about approaches to grading. (Grading was the least favorite aspect of teaching reported in the session’s second poll!) It’s a tricky topic, and I give thanks that I no longer teach college and have to deal with the difficult balancing act between my assessment of student learning and what organizations and society want to hear.
Kudos
This webinar did some things very well. Kudos for including ASL interpretation, real-time captioning, and a slightly delayed (but very usable), real-time, human-provided transcript.
Conclusion
A class is a meeting. This webinar was a meeting. It could have far more effectively demonstrated by example the power and value of the active learning that occurs with participant-driven and participation-rich education. The workshops I run put this into practice. Here’s an example. During them, I talk for less than ten minutes at a time.
Opening with formats like Post It! allows us to focus on what participants want to learn. Using fishbowl sandwiches for discussions ensures wide-ranging conversations. Many other formats are in my toolbox, ready to be pulled out and used when the need arises. I hope to see many of these valuable, tested approaches adopted widely by college teachers. Our students and our society will be better for it.
Not long ago, I designed and facilitated an online workshop that was marred by technical difficulties. The workshop was several hours long, and some (but not all) of the participants reported that my video feed froze at times. Luckily, my audio feed was fine.
Shortly afterward, I talked to a client who had participated in the workshop. I asked them about their workshop experience.
“I couldn’t see you half the time,” they said.
Uh oh.
“But it didn’t matter.”
Phew.
Yes, they loved the workshop.
Like many of my workshops, this one was about creating meaningful participation and engagement at events. And, as usual, it focused on experiential, active learning. Learning through experience, not by listening to me.
As long as my directions for the exercises could be heard, the participants didn’t need to see me for the workshop to be successful. The workshop wasn’t about me; it was about the participants’ learning experiences as they engaged with each other. It was about the experiential learning that took place, both about the others present and the ways the learning occurred through engagement.
Now, let’s flip this scenario for a moment.
Imagine an online meeting lasting several hours that is technically flawless but has no significant engagement.
I’ve “attended” countless meetings of this sort, and you probably have too.
None of these meetings was memorable. (Except perhaps a few especially excruciating ones that I had to attend for some unfortunate reason.)
I suspect you’ve forgotten 99% of such engagement-free meetings. Feel free to let me know if that isn’t the case.
I say 99% because there are a few people, like Paula Poundstone, to whom I would be happy to listen for hours. And perhaps you’ve had the good fortune to attend a meeting with someone like her. Alas, most engagement-free meetings don’t include a Poundstone.
I rest my case.
Meaningful engagement at events beats technical difficulties every time.
Philosophers and scientists have long defined cognition as something done by a single mind. But in January 2023, twenty-eight scientists published a letter to the editor of Cognitive Science that challenges this view of cognition. Rather, they say, “Interaction co-constitutes cognition as a process involving interacting minds. In other words, they believe that interaction is at the heart of cognition.
As I write this, we are entering the fourth year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been responsible for millions of deaths and long-term disabilities. Many more people are going to die and contract Long COVID. In addition, most current events are still dangerous to attend for people with disabilities and certain chronic illnesses. Under the circumstances, it’s shocking that the meeting industry has developed no widely accepted standards for safer events.
My work is about designing meetings that support power-within for every attendee. There are three overlapping sets of tools for this: 
Maximizing power-with is an obvious force for good for meeting participants (unless, perhaps, you are in a minority with power and want to maintain the status quo.) We are social creatures, and it feels good when we are listened to and experience being truly heard by others—even if they respectfully disagree with us. Consequential bonuses that provide additional joy include discovering agreement, making connections, and moving to action.
Power-over is the most common power dynamic at work in meetings.
Last week I shared 
When we get together and talk there are sometimes things best left unsaid. But often, explicit communication — saying or writing what’s needed to guide or influence desired behavior — improves matters over staying silent or 
Event innovation has to be more than giving attendees souvenirs.
Much of the learning that occurs during a traditional conference is wasted because participants don’t have the time or opportunity to consolidate and integrate personal learning into their future life and work. Though a personal introspective takes about an hour to run, it’s the single best way I know to maximize the learning and future outcomes of an event. I recommend you use one at the end of any multi-day conference.
Software testers do peer conferences right! (They even call them a peer conference, rather than unconference, a term I 
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