In 2022, Zoom added avatars to their Meetings and Webinars products. Initially, Zoom only offered animal avatars, but custom human avatars were added in 2023. Zoom avatars have received mixed reviews (1, 2), including this reaction from Miguel Neves, Editor-in-chief at […]
I’m a big fan of the core facilitation technique pair share. After pairing up participants and providing a short time for thinking about a topic or question, each pair member takes a minute or so, in turn, to share their thoughts with […]
Hey, meeting planners! Yes, you, you know who you are. Are you obsessed with conferences? Well…hopefully not to the same extent as George Meyer. Speedboats have been a lifelong diversion. Scotch, a serious problem. Yet no vice bedevils me like my […]
After a school board informational meeting the other day, I chatted with the moderator, Steve John. We discussed several aspects of the meeting, including the difficulty of working with both sides of an issue. It’s rare for groups larger than […]
Most weekdays, my wife and I join a fifteen-minute online meditation offered by teachers at the Insight Meditation Society. The other day, teacher Matthew Hepburn introduced a dharma practice of meditating, not on one’s breath or body sensations, but on […]
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 […]
The other day, a client booked an hour with me to discuss how to make their conference better. Not much time, but enough for us to uncover and for me to suggest plenty of significant improvements. Thinking about our conversation […]
Since 2007, Jane Hart has compiled an annual Top Digital Tools for Learning List from the results of public surveys. Looking at the trends over time provides a useful overview of the tools that people are using to learn. In addition, her […]
These days I am blessed with clients who are a joy to work with. But that wasn’t always true. Here’s how I learned to attract great consulting clients. It shouldn’t need to be said, but I’m going to say it […]
Sometimes, it’s only at the end that we realize we’re just scratching the surface. Two meetings Oregon 2009 years ago, I facilitated a four-day event “Fixing Food” for the state of Oregon. The participants were farmers, agricultural workers, food wholesalers, […]