A meta look at resources to work and facilitate online more effectively

Sign of these times… everyone’s moving online indeed (with its positive consequences too). Consultants are becoming e-consultants, or online facilitation gurus. I guess I should follow that bandwagon (NOT) ha ha ha.

How to move from face to face to online most effectively? That’s the question on everyone’s lips (photo credit: startkiwi)

In any case, everyone else, who’s just getting to terms with the online collaboration world, is avidly looking for resources to make this transition work. It is a very crowded space already. Which is perhaps the reason why some specialists have preferred to offer their time to answer anyone’s questions and help them move their activities online, rather than share more resources. But if you’re still looking for some good resources, here’s my own selection of what I’ve found around recently:

So far, the very best resource I’ve found – warning it can feel really overwhelming – is this crowdsourced list of online meeting/gathering resources (shared by Nancy White): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NyrEU7n6IUl5rgGiflx_dK8CrdoB2bwyyl9XG-H7iw8/edit?ts=5e6fc9e3#heading=h.jb9co2l7jt1p 

Nancy also recently posted a few additional links that are great:

• Email list for those having to facilitate online:
  https://groups.io/g/f4c-response
• List of events to learn how to do Liberating Structures online
  https://ls.qiqochat.com/events

To which I’ll add a couple more resources from Michelle Laurie’s most recent post:

• Rachel Smith – Crash Course for Translating Your Process to a Virtual Setting.
• Gillian Martin-Mehers ideas for capturing virtual group work effectively.

On KM4Dev (again), Karel Novotny also shared this guide:  “Closer Than Ever: A guide for social change organisations who want to start working online” https://www.apc.org/en/pubs/books/closer-ever-guide and Stacey Young shared this USAID resource on tips to work effectively remotely: https://usaidlearninglab.org/library/ultimate-tipsheet-working-remotely

A few online gathering fundamentals to consider (differently)

Finally a few meta reflections that I’m seeing as I’m really getting into that mode also:

As mentioned in my last post on this blog, online collaboration/facilitation actually follows a lot of principles of face-to-face collaboration/facilitation so if you have experience with the latter, that’s already a huge step ahead.

What is changing a lot and does require more careful consideration is a handful of practical, logistical, design and emotional points:

• The nature of the gathering: fully online or blended with partial face-to-face group interactions. Given the general progression of SARS-COV-2 the former is more likely but still good to check;
• The intention behind the gathering, with either mostly an intention to share information, pick people’s brains or explore and co-create solutions together (following Community At Work‘s seminal typology of Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 meetings). Behind this fundamental question (which should be asked for every conversation you want to have), comes the translated question of whether you want/need synchronous or asynchronous conversations…
• Bandwidth issues and what is being done to allow the full participation of everyone in the gathering – what measures can be put in place for those that may not be able to access a video-conference at all times etc.?
• The geographic distribution of participants and the amount of time zones that the gathering spans – this has important implications on the synchronicity of interactions;
• What can be organised to break the ice among the people online – especially if they don’t know each other – and what do you have up your sleeves to pick up the energy etc. The potential risks of distraction are many more online…
• What online system(s) is (are) being used, to talk/write/read/view – is any of these systems restricted only to ‘staff’? Are there any restrictions that again are going to make it more difficult for anyone to participate? What is the learning curve for people to be able to participate (and even more so to organise something on it?);
• The role distribution to ‘hold the space’ – and this is where things might differ most from face-to-face gatherings: Who facilitates? Who chairs? Who attends to technology-related questions? Who monitors chat and other back channels? Who takes notes of the conversation etc.?
• The best division of time, especially for gatherings which, if happening face-to-face, would take more than day. Online gatherings are potentially more tiring than face-to-face ones, all the more so now as they are multiplying like crazy;
• How can you ensure you ‘read the crowd’ and people’s emotions as well as you might be able to offline? This is particularly important and difficult at the same time, so perhaps think about some feedback moments and breaks to check on people whom you suspect  might be experiencing difficult emotions.

And as ever, keep an open and fun approach to this learning. We are all in it together and no one can improvise themselves an online collaboration expert overtime. Let’s just keep it light, playful, focused, fun, and feedback-informed. There’s chances we’ll gather our 10000 hours of practice earlier than we might have thought…