I have spent a good portion of my time designing and facilitating group interaction (and a little bit of time writing about it.) I’m passionate about supporting groups in achieving tangible outcomes to meet their goals through effective and enjoyable processes. Yes, meetings CAN be fun. I do this both online and face to face.
Face to Face Facilitation
Face to face time is a precious resource that should not be wasted on just content dissemination or front of the room controlled structures. Likewise, it can achieve nothing with totally unstructured free-for-alls. The key is to find the space in between with just enough structure, clear purpose and effective, enjoyable activities.
I design and facilitate face to face meetings and gatherings with an emphasis on interactive, participatory style meetings. One of my primary approaches is using Liberating Structures along with other methods such as Open Space , “unconferences,” Appreciative Inquiry, graphic recording and facilitation, improv and other large group/whole systems approaches. As part of others’ gatherings, I moderate panels, chat shows, interviews and other “front of the room” activities.
I am currently accepting only limited facilitation engagements. See more here.
Online Facilitation
Online interaction can help groups expand their reach and extend their depth through well designed, deployed and facilitated online interaction spaces and processes. I am skilled at assessing your needs and helping you design and deploy such spaces and practices. I have helped clients across the globe execute online meetings, support distributed networks, trainings and deployment of virtual teams, communities of practice and networks.
I can help you identify interactive web-based online interaction strategies and processes to connect with your audiences, constituencies, members or collaborators. I also can work with blends of online and offline strategies. Applications include communities of practice or interest, virtual teams, distance learning/training, online events and conversational communities. I deploy a full range of strategic options such as online conferences, live or asynchronous events, collaborative content creation (text, audio, video), building shared knowledge bases and many other types of interactions. We support these outcomes using tools such as blogs, micro-blogging (i.e. Twitter) wikis, Voice Over IP (i.e. Skype) chats, events, newsletters, dynamic websites and email lists. I can take you from concept to execution by assembling a team of specialists to meet your needs for creating online communities and collaborative workspaces.
I have helped groups build internal competencies to design, build and facilitate their own interactions and support this through a blended range of services. I pay particular attention to process. My services have included:
- Needs assessment (technical, target audience and purpose/goals)
- Creative ideas and imagination – exploration of possibilities
- Site concept strategic planning and social architecture
- Evaluation and selection of interactive tools and software
- Site design and implementation (short and long term online events)
- Provision of experienced online facilitators
- Training of your online facilitators (online and F2F)
- Coaching
- Site monitoring and critique
For capacity building, I used to teach a range of public and bespoke online facilitation classes through Full Circle Training. Much of the old material is available throughout this site. Currently I refer most of this work to other practitioners.
Community and Network Building
While effective meetings and events can be supportive to or even catalyze communities and networks, there is much more to the care and feeding of communities and networks. I work to support the ideation, planning and implementation phases for any type of community (bounded) or network (open and emergent.)