Learning Archives : Page 3 of 8 : Conferences That Work

How to implement participant-driven breakouts in Zoom

Monday, May 11th, 2020 by Adrian Segar

Why implement participant-driven breakouts in Zoom?

I’ve been designing and facilitating participant-driven and participation-rich in-person meetings — aka peer conferences — for almost thirty years. Why? Because participants love these meetings!

Now the COVID-19 pandemic has forced meetings online. Unfortunately, most online events are still using a traditional webinar/broadcast-style approach: presenters speaking for long periods, interspersed with chat-mediated Q&A.

Why Zoom?

Zoom has rapidly become the dominant platform for online meetings. Though there are many features that would make the platform better, it’s popular for good reason. Zoom:

has a well-chosen feature set;
is relatively easy to use; and
has proved very reliable despite the platform’s meteoric growth.

While Zoom is currently missing some functionality that would smooth the process flow, it’s already a viable platform for online peer conferences.

I started using Zoom in 2012, but since the pandemic began I’ve facilitated more Zoom meetings than the last seven years. And I’ve become intrigued with the possibilities of incorporating the peer processes developed for successful face-to-face meetings into online events.

I’ve written three books about why creating participation-rich conferences that deliver effective learning, connection, engagement, and action is so important, and how to do it for in-person events. So I won’t repeat myself here; read them for full details!

In-person meetings have vanished overnight. It’s time to implement what we’ve learned about great face-to-face meeting design and process into online meetings. Meetings will never be the same. When the pandemic is over, the meeting industry will have much more experience and understanding of what is possible online versus in person.

My mission is to make meetings better for everyone involved. That’s why I’m publishing this series of posts on how to implement participant-driven breakouts in Zoom.

I’ll start with an overview.

The big picture

The core reason why peer conferences work is that they become what participants actually want and need. They accomplish this in real-time — during the event — via two essential steps:

At the start of the conference, uncover participants’ wants and needs and the resources in the room.
Develop an optimum conference program that matches the uncovered wants and needs with the resources in the room.

Once the conference program has been developed and scheduled, you’re ready to hold the resulting peer sessions. I’ll explain how to do this in a future post.

Step #1

I’ve been implementing step #1 at in-person events for twenty-five years, using a process called The Three Questions, which is described in detail in my book Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need. In Part 2 of this post, I’ll explain how to implement The Three Questions using Zoom breakout rooms.

As in face-to-face events, I recommend allocating at least ninety minutes for step #1. If you are running an extended event (see below) with multiple sets of breakout sessions, schedule two hours. Note that these times include short breaks, as described in this post.

At the end of step #1:

Participants will have met a useful number of other participants and learned useful information about each other, namely, details of their association with the meeting topic, their wants and needs for the meeting, and their relevant expertise and experience.
Conference organizers will have a comprehensive list of topics, issues, and challenges that are top-of-mind for attendees, plus identified participants who can facilitate/lead/present on them.

Step #2

Step #1 generates a large amount of information about attendees’ real-time wants and needs, as well as relevant expertise and experience that can be tapped.

During step #2, conference leaders and subject matter experts use this information to create an optimum conference program. In Part 3 of this post, I’ll explain how to do this. What’s important to know is that step #2 takes time!

For a small meeting (e.g., 60 people, two one-hour time slots with three simultaneous sessions per slot ==> 6 peer sessions), creating the program might take 30 – 60 minutes.

For a larger event (e.g., 100 people, three one-hour time slots with five simultaneous sessions per slot ==> 15 peer sessions,) choosing a program might take 90 – 150 minutes.

Regardless of the time needed, conference attendees should be otherwise engaged during step #2.

You have (at least) three options at this point.

Allow attendees free time while the conference program is designed

One option is to schedule an attendee break that’s long enough to complete step #2. For example, if your attendees are from the same or contiguous time zones, consider scheduling step #1 so it ends around lunchtime for most of them. Your pre-conference schedule could then include an hour or more break for lunch while the program is developed.

Schedule a presentation for attendees during step #2

While conference leaders and subject matter experts are using step #1 information to choose and schedule peer sessions, the other participants attend a pre-scheduled presentation or session of some kind that’s long enough for step #1 to be completed.

Be sure to include at least a short break between the end of step #1 and the start of the presentation.

One minor drawback of this approach is that step #1 often involves checking the availability of participants who have relevant experience or expertise to lead a peer session, as well as their willingness to do so. Doing this (typically by private message in Zoom text chat) while these participants are involved in another session can be a little disruptive.

Schedule steps #1 and #2 on different days

A third option is to schedule your entire event over two or more days. This gives ample time for step #1 to be completed. For example, you could run step #1 for a couple of hours on Monday morning or afternoon, then complete step #2 and distribute the resulting conference program, and run the resulting peer sessions on Tuesday.

Conclusion

In this post, I’ve provided a brief recap of the benefits of peer conferences, and given a big-picture overview of how you can hold one online. Future posts will cover detailed descriptions of how to carry out steps #1 and #2 using Zoom.

Check back on this blog for upcoming posts on implementing participant-driven breakouts in Zoom. To ensure you don’t miss them, subscribe.

Tags: action, connection, engagement, Learning, online, online meeting, peer conferences, peer sessions, virtual meetings, Zoom| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Should meetings be efficient?

Monday, March 2nd, 2020 by Adrian Segar

Should meetings be efficient?

“Yes,” say thousands of books on how to improve business meetings. And I agree.

But “No”, when we’re talking about most meeting industry events.

Unfortunately, the meeting industry tends to assume that if business meetings should be efficient, meeting industry events should be too.

Obviously, there are aspects of meeting events that should be efficient whenever possible. For example, registration, coffee service, transporting attendees between venues, room set changes, etc.

In addition, a well-thought-out broadcast style design may be the right choice for some trainings and corporate events that require a top-down approach to achieve their objectives.

But, for meetings where you want participants to:

learn effectively;
form valuable connections; and
generate valuable ideas and approaches

you need to design inefficient meetings.

How efficiency can be counterproductive

Sometimes, efficiency can be the enemy of effectiveness. Here are three examples:

“If you have ever watched a symphony orchestra you may have noticed how inefficient the musicians are. They are not utilized 100%. Most have below 50% efficiency. Imagine how good the music would turn out if all instruments were playing all the time. Such is the science of efficiency.“
—Alidad Hamidi

“The problem is that democracy is by definition slow, messy, and cumbersome. Today demands on democracy, driven by modern means of communication, are different. The pace is fast. Decisions have to be made quickly. Time for reflection and compromise is limited.”
—@AlexStubb, former Prime Minister of Finland

“My own experience consulting inside some highly successful companies (Microsoft, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dupont, to name a few) cannot corroborate a relationship between busyness and success. Very successful companies have never struck me as particularly busy; in fact, they are, as a group, rather laid-back.”
—Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency, Tom DeMarco

We are not mind readers

Effectively figuring out what people want and need to learn and giving them the time and space to learn it is inefficient because learning is messy.

Successfully supporting people in making valuable connections at meetings is also inefficient because we do not know who might be valuable to meet until we are given opportunities and good process to find out about the people we’re with.

And creating worthwhile ideas and approaches through group process at meetings is inefficient because we invariably have to generate many ideas that don’t pan out to glean the few specks of gold we’re looking for.

So, should meetings be efficient?

As Alex Stubb says, we are living in a fast-paced world where time is valuable. There is continuing pressure to shorten events, in the belief that busy prospective attendees will be more likely to attend a meeting that doesn’t tie up too much of their time and money.

However, the consequent shortening of programs and sessions has a significant impact on the effectiveness of events: their ability to deliver desired learning, connection, and creative outcomes. So be careful not to destroy the effectiveness of your event in the name of efficiency.

Image attribution: mourgfile / CC

Tags: connection, effective meetings, efficiency, efficient meetings, idea generation, Learning, Slack| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Unlearning is crucial for change

Monday, January 27th, 2020 by Adrian Segar

Unlearning is crucial for change.

We often think of change as additive. We become wiser by “learning something new”. What we often overlook is that changing our beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions involves unlearning as well as learning.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read & write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”
—Alvin Toffler

Unlearning first requires noticing. We are skilled at habituating our circumstances, no matter how unusual. Habituation is valuable because it allows us to adapt to changes in our environment. But habituation also makes it harder to notice that we may need to change our current thinking or behavior.

Thus there’s a delicate balance, a dance, between noticing what is rather than what has become our default ways of thinking, understanding, and acting.

Note that unlearning is not the same as forgetting. Forgetting is the failure to remember what’s still important. (The Japanese remind us of this when you get off a bus.)

I have spent over fifty years unlearning what people and society told me I was and should be. I’m still on a complex journey of relearning who I am. I work to practice being me in each moment. Change work involves not only intellectual shifts and reinterpretations but also the unlearning of habitual responses to emotional experiences and their empathetic replacement.

So remember, unlearning is crucial for change!

Photo attribution: Flickr user gforsythe and Cathy Davidson

Tags: Alvin Toffler, change, facilitating change, habituation, Learning, relearning, unlearning| Posted in Facilitating Change | No Comments »

Becoming Brave

Monday, July 15th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

The past

It’s been a long journey to becoming brave.

Fifty years ago, I was a teenager who, after a single embarrassing moment, gave up dancing in public. For forty years.

Twenty-five years ago I was a college professor who spent hours preparing classes, fearful that students would ask me a question I couldn’t answer. And when I started convening and speaking at conferences I was scared of being “on stage”, even in front of small audiences.

I could share reasons why I was this way, but the reasons — known or not — aren’t what’s important. I felt embarrassment and fear as a response to these kinds of situations. Emotions aren’t susceptible to logic.

The present—an example

On February 16, 2019, I unexpectedly participated in an Italian four-hour drag queen workshop. I say “unexpectedly” because, as twenty of us sat on a coach returning to Milan on the last day of the fourth annual Meeting Design Practicum, we had no idea of what we were about to experience.

“For those who have always dreamed of turning into Marilyn Monroe and want to dance with moves of Raffaella Carrà. For those who torment themselves to understand how they attach false eyelashes and want to know how to walk on heels. For all those who, with a serious but not serious spirit, want to experience a different way of being grotesque on stage.

Because nothing is impossible for a Drag Queen!”

I’d never done anything like this before. It was a tough stretch. Yet when it was time to share our “diva inspiration”, I was the first to step up and demo. (My inspiration was Rihanna in “Shut Up and Drive“, in case you’re interested.)

At the end of the workshop, each group member received another’s photo and we added a word that summed up our experience of this person.

I am proud that Stefano added “BRAVE” to mine.

Being out there

Also, these days I think nothing of dancing in public (it’s gotta be the right music though).

And I’m comfortable being in front of thousands of people at the largest events I facilitate.

Becoming brave

How did all this happen?

First, a reminder about emotions. Although we don’t like to admit it, they, not our reasoning run our lives. Emotions evolved because they have survival value. I mentioned fear and embarrassment earlier. Embarrassment is a form of shame. Feeling fear is helpful when you come across a tiger in the forest. Feelings of shame strengthen human communities by lessening the likelihood that members will do things they know are bad for others.

Our emotions handicap us, however, when they arise for reasons that are not related to their true survival roots. My feelings about dancing or speaking in public came from being taught when young to feel shame when I made mistakes.

My response to this was to try to be as perfect as possible. To try to hide the mistakes I inevitably made, and avoid situations where I might make them. Believing I wasn’t a “good” dancer, I avoided dancing when others could see. Worrying that I might be tongue-tied or incoherent when speaking, I’d practice for hours, reluctant to risk slipping up “on stage”.

It took participating in a couple of multi-day, experiential, large and small-group workshops, in 2003 and 2005, for me to see these limiting beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions I held about myself, and receive some experiences of what I could be like when freed of them.

The rest was practice.

Not caring about how others see me

Today, I don’t care what I look like when I dance anymore; I dance because I love to dance. I still feel nervous excitement right before I’m about to speak to or facilitate hundreds of people, but it vanishes as soon as I start because I love what I do and I’m not caught up in being flawless.

Today, when I have opportunities to do things I’ve never done before, I say “yes” to many of them. I love to learn, and I’ve discovered that I learn from trying new things and making “mistakes” along the way. [In fact, the most important learning occurs when you make mistakes.]

Becoming brave is a journey, and mine isn’t over yet.

I’m happy about that.

Tags: brave, bravery, drag queens, Italy, Learning, meeting design, mistakes, Practicum, workshop| Posted in life lessons | No Comments »

Why I love conference facilitation and design

Monday, April 29th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

Here’s an example of why I love conference facilitation and design. After setting up a Personal Introspective this morning (25 minutes), I turned over what happens to the small groups. Watch the listening and involvement of every person as I weave my phone through the circles of chairs.

These people just determined what they wanted to change in their lives as a result of the experiences, learning, and connections they made during this three-day conference. Now they’re taking turns to share their commitments with group members, getting validation and support in the process. Subsequently, when they leave the conference this afternoon, they’ll have the knowledge and community support to make the changes they want and need in their workplaces.

I love facilitating connection, learning, and growth like this. Being trusted to help conference participants improve their lives via interactive peer learning is an honor — and it feels very good!

That’s why I love my conference facilitation and design work!

Tags: connection, growth, Learning, personal introspective, support| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Five Reasons to Change Conferences

Monday, December 24th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

Here’s my article “Five Reasons to Change Conferences“, published in the December 2018, NSA Speaker magazine.

OUTSIDE IN

Five Reasons to Change Conferences

Peer sessions provide greater connection around content

The most important reason people go to conferences is to usefully connect with others around relevant content. But our conference programs still focus on lectures, where a few experts broadcast their knowledge to passive listeners. During lectures there’s no connection between audience members and no connection around lecture content. Here are five reasons why.

Lectures are a terrible way to learn. We’ve known for over a hundred years that lectures are a terrible way to learn. Lectures are a seductive meeting format because they provide an efficient way of sharing information. However, lectures are perhaps the least effective way of learning anything.

Why? Over time, we rapidly forget almost everything we’ve been told. But when we engage with content, we remember more of it, remember it more accurately, and remember it longer. Every measure of learning increases drastically when attendees actively participate in sessions.

Professionals learn predominantly socially, not in the classroom. Until about twenty years ago, professionals learned most of what they needed to know to do their jobs in the classroom. Today only about 10% of what we need to know involves formal classroom teaching. The other 90% is informal — a combination of self-directed learning, experiential learning on the job or learning at conferences with our peers.

Unfortunately, we persist in making the bulk of “education” at meetings consist of formal presentations by a few experts.

Today, everyone has expertise and experience to share. Everyone who has worked in a profession for a while is an expert resource in some capacity. Instead of limiting content to a few “experts,” peer conferences uncover and tap the thousands of years of expertise and experience in the room. As author David Weinberger puts it: “The smartest person in the room is the room.”

Most sessions don’t address actual attendee wants and needs. Conferences need to provide just-in-time learning, and you can’t predict most of those topics in advance. My research has found that 50 – 90% of all prescheduled conference sessions are not what attendees actually want and need. In contrast, just about all peer conference sessions, chosen and run by participants during the event, are rated highly because they provide what participants want.

At traditional conferences, connection is relegated to the breaks, meals, and socials. We so often hear “The best part of that conference was the hallway conversations.” It doesn’t have to be that way! Peer conferences provide conference sessions where participants connect around relevant, timely content. How can you adapt what you do to be a catalyst for conference change?

Adrian Segar has designed and facilitated meetings for 37 years. He writes regularly about event design, has authored two classic meeting design books, and is an industry advocate for participation-rich, participant-led meetings. Learn about his next book: The Little Book of Event Crowdsourcing Secrets.

Tags: 2018, connection, December, ff0000, just-in-time, Learning, lectures, NSA Speaker magazine, peer conferences, social learning| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Learning in community at conferences

Monday, December 3rd, 2018 by Adrian Segar

Legendary Apple designer Jony Ive explains how learning in community helped Apple make the iPhone:

“When we genuinely look at a problem it’s an opportunity to learn together, and we discover something together. We know that learning in community is powerful. It feeds and supports momentum which in turn encourages a familiarity and an acceptance of challenges associated with doing difficult things. And I’ve come to learn that I think a desire to learn makes doing something new just a little less scary.”
——Jony Ive, Apple designer Jony Ive explains how ‘teetering towards the absurd’ helped him make the iPhone

At conferences, we also learn better when we learn in community. At traditional events, expert speakers broadcast content at attendees. But today our minds are increasingly outside our brains. Our ability to learn effectively now depends mostly on the quality and connectedness of our networks, rather than what’s inside our heads.

Two factors govern how we learn in community.

Uncovered learning
First, to optimize participants’ learning networks, modern conferences need to use uncovered learning. Uncovered learning occurs when we use process to uncover and take advantage of the knowledge and resources in the room. Such process increases active learning and incorporates all the expertise and experience available.

Building and supporting a community of practice
And second, learning in community is an ideal way to build and strengthen a conference’s community of practice. Peer conference process provides the opportunity for anyone to contribute, thus encouraging and supporting meaningful connection. Learning in community fosters cooperation and collaboration, creating a community of practice bridge between these two core forms of connection.

How could/do you support and encourage learning in community at your events? Share your ideas and experiences in the comments below!

Tags: Apple, collaboration, community of practice, cooperation, cooperative learning, iPhone, Jony Ive, Learning, learning in community, uncovered learning| Posted in Event design, Learning | No Comments »

Scenes from a Participate! Workshop and Solution Room

Monday, November 5th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

40 seconds of highlights from the Participate! workshop and Solution Room I recently facilitated for the New York State Bar Association.

One of the most rewarding aspects of my work is training associations how to create powerful and effective participant-driven and participation-rich conferences. I love facilitating the learning that occurs. The training equips the organization with the tools needed to transform its events. Do you want to significantly improve your meetings? Then please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Tags: connection, Learning, participant-driven, Participate!, participation-rich, support, training, workshop| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

An innovative conference competition format

Monday, September 17th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

My Dutch friend and expert moderator, Jan Jaap In der Maur, recently shared an innovative format for an in-conference pitch competition he devised for the Conventa Crossover Conference, in Ljubljana, Slovenia:

“There were also the Conventa Crossover Awards. Traditionally, this kills the dynamics of every conference: there were 16 finalists, who all had to be given the opportunity to pitch. The initial, but rather traditional idea was to allow them all 10 minutes. This would have lead to 2 (!) hours of pitching, which wouldn’t have been fair to anyone.

At the same time, we didn’t want the pitches to be too short and we wanted the participants not only to vote, but also to learn from the projects. So this is what we did:

First, all finalists were allowed to show a video of 90 seconds and present a pitch of 30 seconds. So only 2 minutes in total. Then, all finalists were given a desk. In four rounds of 15 minutes each, participants were given the opportunity to visit a maximum of 4 projects, to ask questions and get more information.

Once again, this allowed participants to only invest time in projects they were genuinely interested in. And the finalists only had to present to those who really wanted to listen. In the end, some of the finalists talked to many participants and some only talked to a very small group. Is this fair? Well, maybe not. But hey … this was a competition!”
—Jan-Jaap, New formats and great pictures from Conventa Crossover

What I like about this process

Many conference “competitions” are actually marketing contests in disguise rather than judgments of the merits of the products/services/concepts entered. Entrants who do the best job of sewing up participant votes beforehand emerge triumphant. J-J’s format, which includes opportunities during the competition to first inform and then share detailed information with interested participants helps make the event a genuine competition, instead of one whose outcome is a foregone conclusion.
Minimizing the time available for initial introductions makes a lot of sense. It forces competitors to concentrate on clearly communicating their entry’s core features and frees up valuable conference time.
Requiring a video — which allows any number of communication approaches — plus a live pitch, efficiently showcases each entry in both a creative and a personal way, giving participants a wide-spectrum feel for both the entry and its creators.
Introducing the entrants and then providing follow-up time for in-depth explorations and learning about a subset of the entries is a great way to turn a traditional competition into learning experiences chosen by participants. If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know I’m a fan of conference formats that grant participants opportunities to choose their learning journey!

What I might change

4 15-minute rounds for the final phase seems a little longer than necessary. Perhaps 7 – 10 minutes per round would free up time for other conference activities?
The article doesn’t mention the details of the final vote or the number of “prizes”. At the time of writing, the finalists’ page implies that there will be a single “Conventa Best Event Award”, and that “The votes from the participants account for 20% of the overall score”, implying that there is a separate jury that will provide the other 80%. Perhaps there were good reasons for this voting format, rather than having the meeting participants decide the “winner(s)”. Regardless, I think it’s always best to provide a public explanation and rationale for any voting scheme used.

Conclusion

How many uninteresting “Awards” sessions have you sat through? (Uninteresting, that is, unless you got an award or a friend of yours did.) And in how many of those sessions did you learn something interesting and/or useful? Not many, I bet!

Jan Jaap’s innovative conference competition format neatly and efficiently integrates useful participant-selected learning into an event. Congratulations J-J on rethinking and improving on what is typically a rote conference component!

Tags: award ceremony, awards, competition, Conventa, Jan Jaap In der Maur, Learning, pitching, session format, Slovenia| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Create memorable learning experiences and connections at simple workshops

Monday, July 30th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

I often design and facilitate workshops for association members most of whom haven’t met before. The desired outcomes are for each participant to gain useful and relevant professional insights, and to make significant new connections.

During the workshops, each participant shares and receives consulting from a small peer group on a current professional challenge. The only technologies used are printed cards, paper-covered round tables, and colored pens.

Here’s what you might see on a stroll through a typical workshop:

An example

At one workshop, association staffers noted that no one touched a cell phone, and intense conversations with frequent bursts of laughter filled the entire two-hour event.

A participant started crying and his group members rushed to console and support him. (We learned later that he had been unfairly fired earlier in the day.) Afterward, we saw many people swapping business cards and making arrangements to meet up again. Before leaving, the fired man told me that, despite his dire circumstances, he had had a very positive experience and made several good new friends in his group. Other participants shared during post-workshop conversations that the experience would be memorable because of their personal learning and the new connections made.

Follow-up evaluations confirmed that participants obtained meaningful peer support and advice, and began new friendships with other workshop participants.

Such workshops routinely meet the outcomes they’re designed to achieve: creating useful and memorable learning experiences and connections.

Why are these workshops successful?

These workshops are not successful because of the:

excellence of a speaker;
beauty/novelty of the venue/F&B/entertainment; or
extraordinary facilitation.

(Full disclosure: the facilitation needs to be competent!)

They are successful because of the process design that supports participants learning from each other while simultaneously enjoying a positive emotional connection together.

Adult professional peers can learn much from each other, and when they meet they are hungry to find solutions to current problems, explore issues, and make connections with others who work in the same sphere.

The successful workshops I’ve described above do not have a single expert sharing content. (Rather, it’s fair to say, they tap the expertise and experience of everyone present.) All they need for success is good process, competent facilitation, and a few low-tech items.

They are also simple. Every process element is a strategic ingredient of the workshop design. Running these workshops helps me continually refine the design, stripping away components that distract focus from the desired outcomes.

Many organizations focus on getting the “best” experts to speak at their meetings. Ironically, in my experience it’s almost always easier to create memorable learning and valuable connection for attendees by employing participatory workshop formats. Why? Because they take full advantage of the group’s combined expertise, hone in on what people actually want and need to learn, and build lasting relationships in the process.

Tags: associations, connection, emotional connection, facilitation, Learning, learning experiences, meeting design, peer learning, process design, simple workshop, The Solution Room| Posted in Event design | No Comments »