38 conference participation techniques

conference participation techniques: a black and white photograph of jazz dancers leaping in a dance studio. Photo attribution: Flickr user teo_ladodicivideo

Here’s a glossary of 38 conference participation techniques.

I can guarantee there will be at least a few unfamiliar terms in this glossary, given that I invented some of them myself. This glossary contains brief definitions; see my new book for more information.

Affinity Grouping: This technique allows a group to discover and share ideas that arise at a session or conference and group them into categories, so they can be organized and discussed. Sometimes called “cards on the wall.”

Anonymous Voting: Any voting method that preserves the anonymity of those voting.

Badge It!: Using participant badges to share useful personal information besides the traditional elements like name, company, etc.

Body 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.

Case Studies and Simulations: Ways to create a classroom or conference environment where participants can create and explore in a semi-realistic way alternative roles, points of view, puzzles, and positions. Case studies use a story as a jumping-off place for group analysis and discussion, while simulations immerse participants into an experiential situation.

Conference Arc: An approach to design that concentrates on event chronological parts—openers, middles, and endings—and the consequential progressive experience of participants.

Consensus voting: Voting techniques that gauge the degree of group consensus on a point of view or course of action.

Continuum Voting: See Human Spectrograms.

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.

Fishbowls: Group process that facilitates focused discussion, either by assuring that the conversation at any moment is restricted to a few clearly defined people or by allowing representatives of both sides of a point of view time, in turn, to listen to and question representatives of the opposing viewpoint.

Group Spectives: Closing conference sessions that provide time for attendees to collectively take stock, reflecting on where they started, the path traveled, and the journey yet to come.

Guided Discussions: Guided small discussion groups used regularly during a session to expose different answers, viewpoints, and levels of understanding and create multiple simultaneous rich customized learning environments in the room.

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.

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.)

Open Space: Open Space is a simple method for participants to create their own meetings.

Openers: Participation techniques that are especially useful during the early stages of a group’s time together.

Pair Share: Develops and reinforces learning via discussion of a topic or question with a partner during a session.

Participatory Voting: Any form of voting that provides public information about viewpoints in the room and paves the way for further discussion

Personal Introspectives: Two-part closing conference sessions that guide participants through a review of what they have learned and a determination of what they want to consequently change in their lives.

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.

Pro Action Café: Pro Action Café is a blend of World Café and Open Space that facilitates reflection, discussion and consolidation of ideas, and moving to action.

Public Voting: Voting methods that allow a group to see the individuals who have voted and how they voted.

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

Roundtables: Structured conference openers that employ The Three Questions to 1) define and model an active, interactive, and safe conference environment; 2) provide a structured forum for attendees to meet and learn about each others’ affiliations, interests, experience, and expertise and 3) uncover the topics that people want to discuss and share.

Seat Swap: Seat Swap increases conversational partners at seated meals by having diners switch seats at appointed times.

Semi-anonymous voting: Voting techniques where others can only determine how individuals vote by watching them closely during the voting process.

Short Form Presentations Pecha Kucha and Ignite: Very short stylized presentations that offer a rapid introduction to a topic, an idea, or an experience and that act as a jumping-off place for stimulated viewers to start learning more via engagement afterward.

Small Group Discussions: Techniques that use small groups to improve learning, connection, interaction, and engagement.

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.

The Solution Room: An opening or closing conference session that engages and connects attendees and provides peer-supported advice on their most pressing problems.

The Three Questions: Supports and encourages a group of people to learn about each other, their wishes for the time they are together, and their relevant experience and expertise.

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.)

World Café: Provides a format for dialogue in small groups around questions that have been determined in advance.

Photo attribution: Flickr user teo_ladodicivideo

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