One of the most valuable tools I use liberally at the start of peer conferences is a variety of human spectrograms, also known as body voting. There’s no quicker and more entertaining way to publicly uncover vital information about who’s in the room. [For a full description of the why, when, how, and tremendous range of this tool, check out Chapter 33 of my book: The Power of Participation.] While I frequently use certain spectrograms, such as experience lines and spectrogram maps, I always tailor them to the specific wants and needs of the participants.
For example, in 2020, I worked with several hundred cardiologists and used two-dimensional body voting to reveal the group’s mix of professional roles (clinical, research, and education) and research types (population, clinical, basic). This allowed the cardiologists to quickly connect with peers who shared similar professional backgrounds. Later, we ran a one-dimensional human spectrogram to explore opinions about the question: “What is the best heart-healthy diet? Plant-based versus omnivore?”. (Fun fact: cardiologists disagree!) We then set up a debate on the topic.
While I primarily work with peer groups, like association members or communities of practice, when the client is a single organization, human spectrograms can be used in a different way.
Using human spectrograms at in-house events
Most organizations have an organizational chart that defines roles and formal relationships:
“The organization chart is a diagram showing graphically the relation of one official to another, or others, of a company. It is also used to show the relation of one department to another, or others, or of one function of an organization to another, or others. This chart is valuable in that it enables one to visualize a complete organization, by means of the picture it presents.” —Organizational chart, Wikipedia
At the start of an in-house event, a human spectrogram can be a powerful way to reveal the formal structure of the organization. There are a few exceptions:
Small organizations where participants already know everyone.
Otherwise, an organizational chart human spectrogram provides several immediate benefits:
Allows participants to “put a face” to colleagues they may not have met, or have had little contact with.
Makes visible the size and scope of different departments inside the organization.
Uncovers the “shape” of the organization, such as the depth of hierarchies and the relative distribution of leaders, middle management, and other employees.
To facilitate the organizational chart human spectrogram, define a physical dimension in the room: “Leadership by this wall, subordinates towards the opposite wall.” You can then guide participants to form the spectrogram either top-down (leadership first) or bottom-up. The former is usually more efficient, while the latter allows for a more relaxed pace as people find their place and become aware of other participants.
If some employees will be absent, consider providing signs or cards with their names to install appropriately in the spectrogram.
Once the human spectrogram is complete, a good facilitator can leverage it in various ways, depending on the meeting’s goals and objectives. For example, you could:
Explore potential departmental reorganizations.
Uncover communication gaps within the organization.
Reflect on staffing levels.
Obtain feedback on outstanding issues and brainstorm solutions.
Given the variety of possibilities, such work should be carefully planned before the meeting.
Conclusion
I’ve only scratched the surface of how to apply human spectrograms to in-person meetings. Hopefully, you’re convinced that an organizational chart human spectrogram can be an insightful starting point for exploring an organization’s dynamics and addressing key issues.
Have you ever used an organizational chart human spectrogram? Share your experience in the comments below!
Over the years I’ve designed and facilitated hundreds of meetings. One of the most common issues I address that is rarely acknowledged openly is the tension between the wants and needs of suppliers and practitioners at meetings. By “suppliers” I mean vendors of products or services, and sponsors. By “practitioners” I mean the folks who do what the meeting is about; e.g., doctors at a medical event or scientists at a conservation conference.
Sometimes these groups are given well-defined opportunities to interact in a familiar way. Often, vendors meet with practitioners at a tradeshow, and sponsors (who are usually vendors too) get opportunities to address practitioners. Such forms of interaction are well understood and I won’t address them further here.
But what happens when both suppliers and practitioners at meetings attend sessions?
What happens when suppliers attend event sessions
I’ll start by saying that I’ve found that the smartest suppliers attend relevant meeting sessions. Even if they keep their mouths shut during the session, good suppliers can learn about content that’s relevant to what they sell. And in addition, they can also learn about practitioners’ wants, needs, and concerns — both as individuals and as a group — that will make a smart supplier’s work easier.
Having both suppliers and practitioners at meetings attend sessions has both positive and negative consequences. Unfortunately, supplier and practitioner perspectives on having suppliers present don’t usually align.
The practitioner’s perspective on including suppliers at meeting sessions
Typically, practitioners:
Really don’t want suppliers to pitch what they’re selling during a session.
May not want to talk about supplier products and services when suppliers are present.
Less frequently, practitioners may appreciate suppliers with subject matter expertise who contribute to the value of sessions without overt pitching.
The supplier’s perspective on attending meeting sessions
Typically, suppliers are looking for opportunities to sell and perhaps get some education.
Smart suppliers will do this by contributing to session value without blatant pitching, and by learning more about practitioners’ wants, needs, and concerns.
Unfortunately, some suppliers will alienate practitioners by inappropriately pushing what they sell. (A tip: don’t do this!Few people want to be hustled. You will alienate most if not all of your potential sales prospects.)
How to maximize the benefits of meetings and sessions that include both suppliers and practitioners
Most meetings simply don’t address the conflicting wants and needs described above. That’s a shame. With a little forethought, it’s possible to maximize the benefits of meetings and sessions that include both suppliers and practitioners while minimizing undesired outcomes.
Here’s what you can do.
Understand practitioners’ and suppliers’ wants, needs, and expectations in advance
First, you need to understand before the meeting what your practitioners and suppliers want, need, and expect. As a meeting designer, if a meeting is going to include both practitioners and suppliers I always ask my clients about the relationship between these groups and their wants and needs.
Some associations, for example, know both groups well and are confident that their members are comfortable with suppliers in their sessions. Others tell me that their members don’t want suppliers present in some or all of their sessions. For example, I once worked on the design of a legal conference where the practitioners worked at large law firms and the suppliers were outside counsel attorneys eager to get a slice of lucrative legal business. Discussing what level of access outside counsel would have to the law firms during the event was the most difficult part of the meeting design.
Another key factor is the expected ratio of practitioners to suppliers at event sessions. If a minority of attendees are suppliers, it’s usually fairly easy to ensure constructive behavior in sessions. But sometimes the reverse is true. Recently I attended an online speed dating platform’s meeting industry event. I wanted to meet some other meeting planners and get to know them a little. But as I was matched with supplier after supplier it became clear that few meeting planners were present, and I had to politely listen to pitch after pitch from suppliers. The experience turned out to be a waste of my time and did not endear me to the platform.
To avoid unpleasant (at least to practitioners) experiences like this, do the following.
Facilitate active learning about who’s present and their roles
Uncovering who’s at a meeting and the relevant roles they play is one of the important things I do at meetings I facilitate. Body voting (aka human spectrograms) is the key technique I use. The specifics depend on what is useful for the people in the room to know. In the context of this post, at a minimum I’ll have attendees move into two groups: practitioners and suppliers in different areas of the room. All attendees can then see who else “like them” is present. Invariably, I’ll ask participants to divide into more specific sub-groups — determined in advance via client consultation. I’ll then give each grouping a little time for members to get to know each other.
For example, at a conference for librarians, I might first have them move into groups by the kind of library they work at: e.g. public, K-12 school, college, specialty, and “other”. Then I’ll ask them to organize themselves by role: e.g. director, cataloging/technical services, reference/adult, youth, trustee, or friend. During this exercise, if anyone wants to know about a grouping I haven’t included it’s easy to have people regroup to supply that information.
Doing this simple exercise allows participants to quickly get a sense of the sizes of pertinent groups present. In addition, they get the opportunity to meet other attendees who are “like them”.
Unless you’re facilitating a local conference, also include a human spectrogram map, which helps attendees meet others who live near them. Doing this also allows regional suppliers to meet nearby practitioners.
Discovering at the start of an event or session others who live near you, the proportions of practitioners to suppliers present, and other “similar to you” individuals is valuable information that every meeting should make available.
Tell suppliers not to pitch in sessions
While most attendees expect and tolerate brief scheduled pitches from sponsors, impromptu marketing during sessions is rarely appreciated. Most suppliers know that aggressive pitching during sessions is not a productive approach, but some don’t. Minimize this behavior by telling suppliers that marketing is not allowed during meeting sessions. A brief announcement to this effect at the opening of the meeting won’t hurt either. Finally, before the event, ask leaders to curtail pitches occurring in their sessions.
Restrict supplier-led sessions to topics where the supplier has significant subject matter expertise
I’m not against sessions being led or presented by suppliers per se. (Suppliers explicitly identified as sponsors, of course, get to pitch a little.) But I have attended too many events where a supplier leading a session uses most of their time to hawk their product or services. These sessions — often misleadingly advertised as containing useful content — leave a bad taste in most attendees’ mouths. Before you assign a supplier to lead or present at a session, check that they have significant subject matter expertise, and tell them directly that they should avoid any pitching.
I still remember vividly a conference I convened forty years ago where a vendor ignored this request and pitched their products for twenty minutes to the entire event. These days I would have interrupted them, but back then I felt too embarrassed to intervene. There are no guarantees that every supplier will respect your request. But making it explicitly before the event should minimize all but the most brazen behavior.
When appropriate, consider offering “practitioner-only” sessions
Practitioners sometimes don’t want suppliers present during certain sessions. For example, consider a session where practitioners want to discuss the pros and cons of various commercial solutions to a common problem. At such sessions, the inclusion of suppliers inhibits free and frank discussion. It also introduces the possibility that suppliers will then pursue individual practitioners who shared they’re ready to buy. So state in the session description that it’s for practitioners only. If suppliers turn up they can be asked politely to leave.
Conclusion
Integrating practitioners and suppliers appropriately in meeting sessions can improve everyone’s experience. Practitioners appreciate the experience and expertise that knowledgeable suppliers can bring, while suppliers build better relationships with practitioners without aggressive marketing.
If your meetings involve suppliers attending sessions, please use these simple approaches to maximize the synergy by including both groups, while minimizing the all-too-common downsides. Your participants will appreciate the results!
Do you have additional suggestions or comments on integrating suppliers appropriately into meeting sessions? Share them in the comments below!
Earlier this month, the folks at Gatherly kindly invited me to host an event of my choosing for their clients and potential users. I decided to facilitate an online workshop in Gatherly that took full advantage of the platform. This coming June will mark my 30th year of designing and facilitating participant-driven and participation-rich meetings. So I designed the workshop as an “Ask Adrian Anything” about meeting design and facilitation.
I’ve shared the why? and the details of how I typically run this format here. In this post, I cover the additions I made, issues that arose, my impressions, and the feedback the workshop received.
An experiment: I try something I’ve never done before!
I like the Gatherly platform and have reviewed it a couple of times (1, 2). Gatherly’s best feature, in my opinion, is its user interface for online social interaction. The platform uses a birds-eye view of rooms (there can be more than one of them on different “floors”). Each participant is shown as a named icon. Deciding to talk with someone is as easy as clicking on their icon, which moves you to their position in the room and puts you in video chat. The two of you then form a “huddle”, shown as a circle with the number of people talking at its center.
Moving your mouse cursor over a huddle shows you the names of the people there. Others can join a huddle by clicking on it; you can leave a huddle at any time by clicking on the floor outside it. Gatherly currently supports huddles of up to fifteen people.
Because Gatherly allows you to see where people are in a room, it can support a fundamental technique I use at almost all in-person events I design and facilitate: body voting, aka human spectrograms.
So I was excited to see whether I could implement body voting online, something I’d never tried before.
Incorporating body voting experiences into the workshop
I ended up incorporating four body voting experiences into the workshop:
“How did I get here?” (run in trios)
“If this workshop was really great for you, what one thing would you want to learn about/discuss/happen?” (run in pairs)
“What industry/job role fits you best?” (See the floor plan we used below.)
Body voting map for “Where do you live?”Body voting map for “What industry/job role fits you best?”
Read on to find out how I implemented these exercises in Gatherly and how they worked out.
Designing an online workshop in Gatherly
The first decision we had to make was how long the workshop should run. Since the event was participant-driven, the Gatherly staff and I agreed to let it run as long as it seemed people wanted, with a 2½ hour limit.
Up until now, I have used Gatherly as a pure platform for online socials. For this workshop — indeed for any workshop — I needed to provide separate whole-group-together and small-group-work environments. Just like every other meeting platform, Gatherly has developed a broadcast/stage mode (see the first image in this post), where one or more speakers can broadcast to everyone else. When you start a Gatherly broadcast, the room map is still visible but huddles are disabled.
So in this workshop, we frequently switched between broadcast and map (huddle) modes. In broadcast mode, I provided short segments of content and instructions for upcoming group work. We also used broadcast mode for fishbowl discussions and the core “Ask Adrian Anything” session.
All meeting platforms that have a small-group/breakout mode pose a communication problem for the meeting host or facilitator. Small groups meet via video chat, so messages from the meeting host to everyone can’t be sent through audio — the standard communication mode when in broadcast.
In Gatherly, the tool I had to address this issue was text chat. I asked everyone to select the Event chat option (the red Event button in the first image in this post) and to monitor text chat for exercise instructions during their huddle small group work. I also asked participants to also use text chat for important issues, so this communication channel wouldn’t be filled with distracting messages.
Leading folks through small group work in Gatherly
Before the workshop, I prepared a text document with step-by-step instructions needed to lead participants through all the exercises I had planned.
Here’s a sample:
For each small group exercise, I did the following:
In broadcast mode, verbally explain and go through the exercise steps.
Switch to map mode. Cut and paste each prepared prompt into the Event text chat at the appropriate time.
Provide a final prompt that we’d be returning to broadcast mode.
Switch back to broadcast mode.
Once I’d practiced this flow beforehand for a while, it was easy to run.
Using raise hands during the workshop
I chose to use Gatherly’s raise hands tool in a couple of ways during the workshop.
During the geographical map and industry/role body voting exercises, I asked people who lived outside the United States, or who placed themselves in the “Other” area of the industry/role floor map to raise their hands. When you do this in Gatherly, your name rises to the top of the participant list, so you’re easy to spot. In broadcast mode, we brought these folks briefly onto the stage and asked them to share their name and where they lived/their role. This is analogous to walking around and interviewing such individuals at in-person meetings. Recognizing people who are a little outside the main group’s geographical focus/job descriptions is interesting and helps to bring them into the group.
During fishbowl-based group discussions, including the Ask Adrian Anything segment, we asked people to raise their hands if they had a question or wanted to add their voice to a current conversation. Only Gatherly admins can remove people from the stage, so we asked people to lower their hands when they wanted to leave the current discussion.
A major issue that arose during the workshop
While facilitating this online workshop in Gatherly, I made heavy use of Gatherly’s broadcast mode for the first time. Unfortunately, the broadcast mode did not work reliably for some people. At times, the video stream for some participants on stage (including me) was blank. When this happened to me, I wasn’t aware of it since my screen showed my own camera-direct video, and I was only made aware of the problem through text chat.
I’d seen this problem while testing the workshop platform beforehand, using two computers in my office on different ISPs and networks to join the session. At the time I assumed it was a temporary glitch or technical issue involving the OS/Chrome version used by one of my machines. This turned out not to be the case. Most people showed up fine, but functionality like this — a basic feature of pretty much every meeting platform these days — should be rock solid. (I’ve never seen this happen on Zoom, for example.)
Given that I’ve found the video chat provided in huddles (map mode) by Gatherly to be more reliable than any other platform I’ve tried, this deficiency is puzzling. I hope it’s eliminated soon.
My thoughts and impressions of the workshop
Almost everyone stayed for the whole workshop!
I had no idea who would show up for the workshop or how long it would run. When we did the geographical map exercise, a substantial proportion of participants were from outside the US, which I did not expect. But what really surprised me was that almost everyone stayed for two hours, until after the Ask Adrian Session was over. (And a few people shared at the start that they weren’t going to be able to stay the whole time.)
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve found that when you create meetings that allow and support engagement at any time on participants’ terms, people stick around.
A small group remained for informal discussion and feedback, and we reluctantly wound up when we reached our 2½ hour hard limit.
Guiding participants through small group activities
Before the workshop, I wondered how well using text chat to prompt small group activities would work. Would participants, busily engaged with each other, follow the prompts? (This can be a problem when in person too, but it’s easier to see when it’s happening.)
I needn’t have worried. Participants responded to my directions to form groups of various sizes much more quickly than I expected. In fact, they divided into groups of the right size faster than in an in-person workshop! The Gatherly birds-eye view of everyone in the room, plus the displayed count of each huddle size makes it easy to see who’s not yet in a group, and which groups are too large or too small.
Feedback on the workshop
The Gatherly staff were impressed that so many people stayed so long, (and I was pleased)!
Several people commented that although they could not see me during portions of the broadcast segments, my audio feed was all they needed to stay engaged. Yes, it’s nice to see people at online meetings. But it’s worth remembering that for those who aren’t hearing impaired, audio beats video every time.
The small group exercises were popular. And people thanked me for showing the value of what we did, not only by experiencing it but also by learning how to facilitate the formats for their own communities.
Conclusions
I learned that I can successfully run body voting online, at least on Gatherly. (Wonder will probably work too.) Body voting is perhaps the best way for a group to quickly learn important information about who’s present. To have this capability online is valuable. (See my book The Power of Participation to learn more about body voting.)
One suggestion I have for Gatherly to improve its product is to provide a better way for meeting hosts to broadcast instructions when participants are in huddles. This could be done with text messages that are displayed more prominently than at present to all huddle members.
Would I facilitate an online workshop in Gatherly again? Absolutely! (As long as the broadcast video problem is fixed.)
Whenever I open a meeting I run a human spectrogram map, allowing participants to quickly discover everyone at the meeting who lives (or works) near them. This is one of the most useful things you can do for a group of people who don’t know each other — and it only takes a few minutes!
A basic human spectrogram map
The resources for a human spectrogram map are simple: a projected map of the geographic region where the majority of participants live, with the current location marked, and enough clear space in the room for participants to move around easily.
To run a map spectrogram, stand in your room’s clear space in a spot facing the map, positioned in the room so that you mirror the position of the venue marker on the map. If you are using the spectrogram to show where people live or work, say something like the following:
“Let’s find out where everyone [lives/works]. OK, this direction [point, usually from where you’re standing toward the projected map] is north, and where I’m standing in the room is [the location of the conference], so if you [live/work] around the corner you’ll stand right next to me. Here’s a map of [the conference region/country/continent] for the geographically challenged, like me. Please move to stand where you [live/work]. You’ll need to talk to each other!”
If there are major cities or landmarks nearby, it’s helpful to point to where they would be represented in the room. On a map of a country, like the U.S.A. map above, I point to the places in the room representing regions: e.g., “There’s New England, where I’m from, Florida’s over there, Minneapolis is in that direction, and California’s to my left.”
Wait while people determine where to stand. Once most people seem to have found their right location, ask them to introduce themselves to each other and give them some time to do so.
It’s hard to stop the hubbub of conversation that results! Notice anyone who’s standing at the edges of the room (i.e. they live/work outside the map region), ask them where they’re from, and announce it to the group. Also, notice anyone who’s standing alone and encourage them to meet their nearest neighbors.
Map variations
You can adapt this simple spectrogram to specific needs. If you’re exploring how much participants have moved over, say, the last twenty years, you can do a state-change spectrogram by asking people, at your signal, to move to where they lived twenty years ago. Or you can ask them to walk continually between where they work and where they live.
I once ran a map human spectrogram in Abu Dhabi, where most of the workers are not local. When I projected the original map of the United Arab Emirates, we found that everyone at the meeting was living in either Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But when I asked people to move to their country of origin, everyone moved to different places at the edges of the room. I went round and asked the different groups to announce their countries of origin, and then gave them time to discover their birthplace companions.
New ideas I haven’t tried (yet)
One thing I’d love to try at a large venue is to project the map on the floor. Wouldn’t that be great! Perhaps some of the A/V experts who read this blog can share how feasible this is.
Another idea would be to run a map spectrogram in a large room during a social and set up state and/or city tables with pole signs where food and beverages are served. You could use the attendee list geographic data to predetermine the numbers of tables, their sizes, and locations.
Conclusion
Whenever possible, make sure you include a human spectrogram map early in your meetings. Your attendees will thank you!
Do you use human spectrogram maps? Do you have ideas on how they can be improved? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
“How old are you?” All of us have wondered about the age of someone we’ve met, but asking this question can be awkward, even during a one-to-one conversation. Making public the ages of hundreds of people in a meeting room — well, that’s even more awkward! Body voting (aka human spectrograms) can uncover this information in a few minutes, but because age can be a sensitive subject, I’ve always demurred requests to have participants line up by age at a meeting.
Until last week.
One approach —feel free to lie!
One way to make a sensitive statistic safer for participants to reveal is to give them permission to lie. When appropriate, I tell people they get to decide what answer to give, and that I’m not going to check up on them.
This works well for “fuzzy” questions like “How long have you been in [this profession]?” But, in my experience, some people will still be uncomfortable lying about their age — especially if there are a few people present who know how old they actually are!
A safer approach
Last week, I facilitated two meeting design workshops for the fifty (day 1) and 150 (day 2) cardiologists and staff who create and lead conferences for the American Heart Association. During each workshop, after participants had experienced several body voting exercises where they met peers living near them and those with similar roles, I asked what else they’d like to know about each other.
Adrian running body voting at American Heart Association meeting, January 29, 2020
On the first day, I was co-leading with eminent cardiologist Professor Emelia Benjamin, who is keenly interested in creative and fun experiments for faculty development and meetings. A participant asked for an age spectrogram, and I gently refused the request and moved on.
Emelia was present on the second day when we again received a request for an age spectrogram. She rushed up to me and suggested “How about an emotional age spectrogram?” I immediately loved the idea so we did it. I asked everyone “How old do you feel you are?” and asked people to line up in order of their emotional age.
Once everyone was in place, after much amusement, I asked them to raise their hand if their emotional age was less than their real age. More information and fun for all!
Emelia suggested it would be interesting to do a two-dimensional version with actual age versus emotional age. Because I was concerned about safety plus lack of time, we passed on this.
Possible improvements
Afterward, with a little Googling, I discovered a neat alternative way to ask about emotional age:
I also came up with a version of Emilia’s two-dimensional spectrogram that supplies blurred information about actual ages.
Have people form an emotional age spectrogram along a center line in the room. Once they’re lined up, indicate four additional lines they can move to, when instructed, above or below their current line, corresponding to how much their actual age relates to their emotional age. (Or they can stay where they are, which means their emotional age is around the same as their actual age.)
The five lines indicate a person’s actual age is:
A lot more than their emotional age.
Somewhat more than their emotional age.
About the same as their emotional age {original center line}.
Somewhat less than their emotional age.
A lot less than their emotional age.
Once participants understand these options, ask them to move simultaneously. As with any human spectrogram, have them observe the distribution in the room and their neighbors, and add any pertinent observations.
How old are you? The next time participants ask for this information via a human spectrogram I’ll know what to do. Thank you, Emelia Benjamin!
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.
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.
Dipesh Mody, writing from Mumbai, India, asks five great questions about event process design. I’ve interspersed my answers after each question. Q.Dear Adrian,
I have now read both your books and have truly enjoyed reading them. Your work has been very inspiring to many; and I am certainly one of them.
While your book is very well written and structured, I had a few questions for you and I am hoping that you will find the time to respond.
Question 1
After the peer group session sign-up and once the time and space are allocated, who decides which technique to use? Is it the volunteer facilitator of the peer group? If yes, what if the volunteer is not familiar with these techniques? Will he invariably choose a roundtable technique?
Yes, the volunteer facilitator(s) of a peer session is/are responsible for determining the format used in the session. As covered in The Power of Participation, there are a number of basic formats you can use. I give every attendee a one-page peer session facilitation handout (free download) at the start of the event. This short document explains session facilitation, offers a suggested step-by-step process, and includes some tips for effective facilitation.
Analyzing thousands of evaluations of Conferences That Work format events, it’s very rare to see a complaint about the quality of peer session facilitation. So I believe this simple handout is an effective tool for volunteer facilitators. While I could include some additional opening techniques such as Post It, described in The Power of Participation, it’s possible that making the handout longer might reduce its overall effectiveness.
In India, and other regions where organizational cultures tend to be more hierarchical than those in North America and Europe, participants may be less comfortable taking responsibility for leading a session. Under such circumstances, taking twenty minutes at the opening of a peer conference to explain basic peer session leadership techniques can be helpful.
Question 2
From what I understand that certain sessions only a trained facilitator can run them such as World Café, fishbowl, or a human spectrogram. Is my understanding correct? If yes, then such techniques can only be used involving the entire group. For e.g., if the conference size is 50 people then all 50 people need to be in that one session when a human spectrogram technique is being used? Is my understanding correct?
It depends on what “trained” means. I have not received any “formal” facilitation training, but I experienced World Café, fishbowl, and human spectrogram process run by others before I attempted to facilitate them myself. I think many people who have experienced a human spectrogram once could successfully facilitate it under similar circumstances. There are plenty of good resources (including The Power of Participation😄) for other group work techniques.
As participative techniques become more frequently used at conferences, attendees are increasingly likely to be capable of facilitating them. So, I expect the requirement for a “trained” facilitator will decrease over time.
Question 3
About the beginning and the end sessions, I am quite clear but for the middle sessions is there a particular sequence (s) that works best based on your experience? For e.g., use fishbowl to gain a deeper understanding of the top six issues and then follow it up with World Café to discuss solutions to these issues (assuming we have 6 tables with five people on each table: Conference size 30 people). Then use a human spectrogram to vote on the proposed solutions and to select the most plausible ones.
Again, the answer to your event process design question depends on the circumstances—in this case, a session’s desired outcomes. It sounds like you are asking about process to explore and choose solutions to problems. Because we hold meetings for many different reasons, there’s no single process sequence that’s appropriate for every situation.
The Conferences That Work format, for example, works very well for a group of peers who are meeting to learn and connect for individual reasons, determine common ground, and discover and act on opportunities available to the group.
If, as per your example, the meeting is to learn and discuss six pre-determined important issues, you might well use techniques like fishbowl and World Café as opening and mid-course process. If attendees don’t know each other well, an opening roundtable would be useful. Or if the important issues were unknown or unclear at the start of a meeting, introductory educational sessions plus affinity grouping might be appropriate.
As far as discussing solutions is concerned, while human spectrograms are a useful tool to gauge sentiment, process prescribed by the norms of the group, organization, association, or corporation stakeholders typically determines outcomes.
Question 4
About World Café or human spectrogram or voting, while a volunteer team can assist in framing the right questions as pre-work but my experience shows that getting them to contribute to the questions is difficult as they don’t have time to devote to such pre-work activities due to work-related and other commitments. Further, on page 222 of Power of Participation, you have identified questions for collective attention, for finding deeper insights, for forward movement, etc. In light of this, would it be a good idea for the attendees to frame the questions during the conference beginning? Would this work in your experience?
If you are going to use World Café at an event, pre-work defining good table questions is essential. While there are frameworks that can be helpful in devising Café question rounds (e.g. those for sense-making by Chris Corrigan and strategic planning by John Inman), I think it’s very hard to build consensually-good questions on the fly at the event unless participants are patient and willing enough to spend a significant amount of time. It’s akin to bringing a large group of people to a building site and asking them to collectively design and erect a building from scratch. Not impossible, but difficult!
Question 5
While your book does provide model conference schedules, it falls a bit short of getting a real sense of what a real schedule looks like. It would be really great if you could add a few real examples of conferences you facilitated. And useful to get a sense of how you mixed and matched various techniques (fishbowl, World Café, spectrograms, etc.) during a let’s say three-day conference around a particular theme. It would be a great addition to what a truly amazing book it already is.
Dipesh, I think that’s a good idea in principle. However, I’m wary of supplying such examples unless they include extensive background on why the specific types and flow of process techniques were used in the event process design. The danger of providing condensed examples is that some readers will be tempted to copy them verbatim for events that involve participants, logistical constraints, and desired outcomes that are significantly different from those that generated the example design. End result—a design that doesn’t satisfy stakeholder needs, leading to poor evaluations and, perhaps, the conclusion that these new-fangled event designs “don’t work.”
There are so many factors involved in creating a good event design that I estimate a useful case study of a single event design that comprehensively covers the reasons for the design choices made might require 10,000+ words and many days of work! A worthy project, but one that may have to wait a while…
Best regards,
Dipesh Mody, India
Thanks for your thoughtful questions about event process design, Dipesh. I hope these answers help a little in your quest to produce fine events in India!
Best wishes,
Adrian Segar
Another issue of an occasional series—Dear Adrian—in which I answer questions sent to me about event design, elementary particle physics, solar hot water systems, and anything else I might conceivably know something about. If you have a question you’d like me to answer, please write to me. (Don’t worry, I won’t publish anything without your permission).
The creative folks at Kinetech Arts in San Francisco published this delightful illustration of body voting, inspired by a short presentation I gave at their weekly media lab on August 4, 2015.
One-dimensional human spectrograms like these are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many great variants—including two-dimensional and state-change versions—that you can use to quickly and enjoyably explore all kinds of useful information about a group. Read Chapter 33 of my book The Power of Participation for the complete what, why, when, and how of this powerful public voting participative technique.
One of the most valuable tools I use liberally at the start of peer conferences is a variety of human spectrograms, also known as body voting. There’s no quicker and more entertaining way to publicly uncover vital information about who’s in the room. [For a full description of the why, when, how, and tremendous range of this tool, check out Chapter 33 of my book: The Power of Participation.] While I frequently use certain spectrograms, such as experience lines and spectrogram maps, I always tailor them to the specific wants and needs of the participants.
Over the years I’ve designed and facilitated hundreds of meetings. One of the most common issues I address that is rarely acknowledged openly is the tension between the wants and needs of suppliers and practitioners at meetings. By “suppliers” I mean vendors of products or services, and sponsors. By “practitioners” I mean the folks who do what the meeting is about; e.g., doctors at a medical event or scientists at a conservation conference.
“How old are you?” All of us have wondered about the age of someone we’ve met, but asking this question can be awkward, even during a one-to-one conversation. Making public the ages of hundreds of people in a meeting room — well, that’s even more awkward! 
In 
