This page hosts all the follow-up resources from the session The Secret to Participation is Facilitation! If there are any resources that you were hoping would be included that are not on this page, please reach out to Meg at Meg@facilitator.cards.
The Agenda
These were the Facilitator Cards that I used to plan our session today.
You can purchase a deck of Facilitator Cards here. With every deck you also get invited to an exclusive live-facilitated training called Card Sharks where we help you get to know your cards and practice putting them to work!
If you’re interested in how I came up with the agenda, the cards that I used today, and other facilitator decisions that I made, I will be doing a live stream on YouTube next week to go into all the nitty-gritty details. Subscribe to the Facilitator Cards YouTube channel to get notified when we go live!
December Intensive
If you enjoyed today’s session you’ll love the December Facilitation Intensive where we’re going to really dig into the heart of these questions of thinking like a facilitator, get lots of practice responding to and thinking through real-life facilitation scenarios, and have hands-on time with our Facilitator Cards.
This is the first time we’re opening up this training as an open enrollment session and would love you to be there! Sign up now to secure your spot (as this session will be limited to 12 people.)
If you have any questions at all please don’t hesitate to reach out!
The Recording
The Tech
Lots of folks had questions about the technology that I was using today to facilitate. The main Zoom-window magic was made possible by using OBS.
You can watch a full walk-through of how to set yourself up with OBS here: https://youtu.be/c_Xf7fq4cwE
I was also using a Streamdeck to switch between my OBS scenes and to put quick links into the chat without ever having to copy and paste.
Watch my demo of Streamdeck here: https://youtu.be/cvRq_pdhWSY
Watch my walkthrough of setting yourself up with Streamdeck here: https://youtu.be/_8uZ40_z2Dc
The other technology I used was AhaSlides for the live polling. You can see all of the slides in our session here: https://presenter.ahaslides.com/share/the-secret-to-participation-1634750332877-7nsxv958w6
Group Genius
These were responses we had as a group where we can learn from the collective wisdom of the room.
How to run good breakout rooms
Tell participants…
- How much time we’ll have
- How many people will be in the breakout room
- Questions they should answer together
- Direction for the conversation
- Encourage them to introduce themselves
- Let us know what you want us to bring back to the group
- Specific ways to interact like, “Everyone share 1 idea first and then discuss”
Things that made the meeting more interactive
The responses to: what did we think made this session more interactive?
- Your spirit is the GO from the start
- Brought humor/levity to the conversation.
- Made space for different kinds of participation
- asking for feedback and making small groups
- Polls, conversation time in small groups, good energy from Meg, easy and fun warm up
- Exploring right way wrong way so that we could discuss the difference rather than you telling us the difference
- Small nonverbal activities where everyone could participate at the same time (ahaslides, chat responses, etc)
- Initial chat question that is an easy opener; lots of different tools for participation (large group, small group, individual); inviting and positive attitude; lots of silence for people to respond
- Variety of techniques - aha slides, breakout rooms, fish bowl - keeps things interactive and moving
- Alert participants via email prior to session to ask about whether participants will be able to be fully present
- Multiple avenues or opportunities to participate…in the fishbowl, in small groups, in the larger group, in the chat, etc.
- Your energy, the pitch and speed of your speech, the way that you gave clear time markers, and expressed interest in what we shared.
- Really clear direction on how people can and should participate and what to expect. Also validating participants and being welcoming of participation!
- Asking for input immediately; stepping up participation levels (polls, then breakout rooms, then fishbowl); lots of pausing; encouraging multiple ways of participating; giving feedback on participation (in chat and spoken); and lots of great energy
- Lots of different ways to share, and lots of safety to feel comfy sharing. Also just the Meg vibe.
- Interactive polling, options share out loud or i chat (px choice), breakout rooms, fishbowl exercise, invitation to participate, engaging with px by name
- Fish bowl, breakout groups, aha slides, your engaging personality/presence, inviting us to unmute, invite us into the chat, maybe you’re using prezi (questions/text on the screen was engaging)
- Really good signposting about what we were about to do next
- Non-repetitive strategies implemented - chat, aha slides, breakout room, fishbowl
- Total presence; ecamm or tools; no slides, survey tool, breakout, fishbowl;
- Offered different roles, everyone had a ‘job’, guiding questions, creating comfortable virtual space for all, different modalities to participate (verbal, chat, liseten)
- Clear instructions, shared timespan for conversation, guidance on use of technology to set up fishbowl, shared Meg’s role in coming in/out of convo
Thanks again to everyone for coming and participating!
Until next time, Happy Facilitating!