In this new era I have been to many online meetings, anyone working from home will be in the same boat. I have also been to several webinars and presentations and have even run a few myself. I mustn’t forget the online interviews as well.
What I haven’t done though is to attend or run an online workshop. Now I have set myself up for two of them and I am nervous about how they are going to go. Stupidly, or through good planning, they are both on the same day.
Why am I worried? In the main because workshops require interaction with the audience. How am I going to get people engaged in discussions when they are physically remote? How am I going to control the conversations to make sure they are relevant to the point, involve all of the delegates and stick to the time I have allocated?
All of these I have done before, many times in fact, but only with people sitting in the same room as me. I feel it is much easier to stand up at a flip chart and orchestrate the proceedings and I am not sure how well I can do this online.
Yet many people must have addressed such issues. A lot of learning has switched to online during the pandemic and I’m sure there are companies who do this sort of thing day in and day out. Perhaps I should ask them.
I’ve planned for both of them and prepared the content. The first is the first in a series of workshops for the North East Initiative on Business Ethics around designing a series of tools for companies to use and the second is for VONNE to help organisations get back to delivering services.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 