Hello everyone,
I've been watching from the sidelines, absorbing and
enjoying this journey.
In answer to the question you posed, Nancy, I can
share our experience at Creating the Future, when we decided to
shift our in-person immersion courses (5 very intense,
consecutive in-person days) to an online experience. We had
several purposes in doing so, including the ability to reach
more people with our mission (teaching how ordinary people can
create systems change), as well as the fact that our course
content had become too large to absorb in those 5 days (folks
began talking about it as drinking from a fire hose).
For us the answer was to change the questions we
were asking. Instead of asking, "What will it take to move this
class online?" we instead went back to the beginning, asking,
"What do we want this class to accomplish? What needs to be in
place for students to accomplish that?" From there, it was easy
to then answer, "What can we create online that will help
students experience that?"
These questions, rooted in Catalytic Thinking, guide
all our work at Creating the Future, so it was a simple exercise
for us. And it shifted everything. What had been a single
way-too-intense, 5-day class became a YEAR's worth of online
classes. We slowed the pace. We increased the facilitation and
participation. ALL content was provided beforehand (flipped
classroom) and ALL online time together was interaction.
In addition to accomplishing all our goals in moving
online, we learned that people who only meet online can
absolutely form community just as quickly as if they had met in
person. And importantly, that our success started not by asking
about converting to online (reacting to the current situation),
but just the opposite - starting from scratch with the purpose
of the gathering, and creating the conditions for each
participant to accomplish that purpose (using the current
situation to create the future).
I hope this is clear. Been feverishly writing these
days, to help folks understand the brain science behind the
feelings of being blindsided / shell-shocked that we're all
experiencing (link is here if it would help anyone in this group
). And so my mind is elsewhere. Please
let me know if there are questions.
Hildy
Hildy Gottlieb
(she/her/hers)
Creating the
Future
Change the Questions, Change the World!
1-520-349-7061
cell
*
Creating the Future is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization
On 3/19/2020 6:48 AM, Nancy White
wrote:
This post is part "thinking out loud" and part action/question.
So if you are interested in both, please read till the end.
One of the things that is showing up for me is people
writing/calling/texting asking "how do I convert this F2F
meeting to online?" (More on that in a separate message.)?
Well, last night I made the mistake of looking at FB before bed
so I slept very poorly AND I had a lot of ideas swirling around
in my head. One was a flashback of the online events many of us
designed and hosted back in the "olden days" when most online
events were primarily text based and asynchronous. There would
be discussion threads rolled out over a period of days and
people would generally have a 24-48 time period to read, post,
and respond to others before we moved on to the next "agenda
item." When we got really fancy we would add periodic telephone
conference calls (yes, telephone!) and things really broke open
when we could start to embed media like visuals, audio and
video.?
The ideas behind this work was that we could include many more
people than could fly to a meeting, and when we had to support
access to local connectivity, it was very often FAR FAR FAR more
economical than bringing people to a physical gathering. While
those who were used to F2F meetings pooh-poohed us, those who
never got to go to those meetings were deeply engaged,
appreciative and brilliant contributors.?
Arrival to March 19 (it is March 19th, isn't it? How many days
have we been quarantined in each of our corners of the world??)
After 10-14 days of super intense Zoom meetings, my brain and
body was not happy. The intensity (yes, of course, jacked up by
the pandemic) was showing on our faces as we stared into our
cameras, still wearing the same sweatshirt from ... how many
days ago?
It hit me, we DO HAVE the ability to use asynchronous tools with
our lovely synchronous tools. Many of us do it every day (yes,
email, basecamp, trello, teams, slack) but those uses have been
for tasking, small message exchange, and not really deeper
conversation. (Yes, JonL - the ?conversation!)
Set up a discussion board, parse out the things that can go
slower, that don't need video, that focus on information
exchange or slower, calmer (and deeper) conversations. Let
people figure out how to take care of the kids and work by
making some of the meeting time a slower, asynchronous time.?
Today I have two calls about meeting design and I wondered, how
would I convert those meetings? What are some of those great
approaches and techniques that worked so well 15-20 years ago??
So what I'd love to discuss - yes asynchronously for now on this
email list - is our ideas for rethinking F2F longer form
meetings (3 day strategic planning, 2 day training, 5 day
intense team consultation) into synch/asynch online meetings.
How do we rethink of time (believe me, we aren't going to
sustain all day online meetings and raise the kids etc, folks.
Get real quick!) What rhythm works well? How does this enhance
cross time zone work.?
I have a lot of ideas, but they are all a-jumble. Please join
in this thread and think with me. I'd like to bring together our
best thinking over 3-5 days and then write it up (we can do that
collaboratively too if folks are interested.)
AND THEN, I propose we do a series of redesign-shops where one
org brings their old meeting agenda, and we offer redesign
ideas. What do you think?
Chime in!
