In this research brief I will share some of the experience of Synergy,a project exploring the use of collaborative meeting software to facilitate asynchronous group activities.  This research was funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education in the UK and led by the University of East Anglia in partnership with the University of Hertfordshire.  Read the full report on this study. As a staff development officer working in Higher Education, a key aspect of my role is to support staf... Read Full Story

Where Rubber Meets Road is my way of bringing some of the practical experiences I’ve observed with clients to bear on the theory of transitioning our successful face to face events to the virtual world.  My last post talked about one client’s experience converting their two day workshop to a virtual event.  Here are some of the traps they almost fell into along the way. Trap #1: Starting with the technology. Thinking about what technology tools support our virtual workshop should be the last ... Read Full Story

I recently spent some time with some wonderful members of the Global Facilitator Services Corps (www.GFSC.org) – if you don’t know this organization I strongly recommend that you visit their web site and find out more about their programs to help communities build resilience in times of crisis. They have a lot to teach us all. The purpose of this particular conversation was to begin to explore how GFSC might build a virtual version of their very successful one or two day face-to-face workshop... Read Full Story

I just read an interesting article published by eminent consulting firm McKinsey & Company entitled “Using technology to improve workforce collaboration” (authors James Manyika, Kara Sprague and Lareina Yee). Click here to take a look at the article, or read on for what struck me as interesting take-aways. A new class of worker:  the Collaboration Worker The authors recast the workforce sector known as Knowledge Workers (a venerable term coined by Peter Drucker in the mid 20th century) in... Read Full Story

When we say “meeting” these days, we often mean getting on a conference call or clicking onto an online web meeting site. Without the ability to peer across the table to learn what our colleague is really thinking or feeling, we must rely on words and a few other contextual cues to impart the real meaning of our colleague’s spoken or written message. Those of us of a certain age have had a whole lifetime in which to learn how to interpret a heavy sigh, a nervous guffaw or dead silence. Younge... Read Full Story

We were oversubscribed within 24 hours of posting our invitation to sign up for our free one hour webinar that demonstrates eight principles for designing interactive webinars by engagingYOU as participants! Based on this response, we’ve added a second webinar! The additional date is Tuesday, November 10th at 8:00 AM PDT (11:00 AM EDT, GMT 4:00 PM) . Below we’ve repeated the information about the webinar. We hope to see you there! Click here to enroll now. Be. honest: How many of ... Read Full Story

Designing Interactive Webinars – How to Keep People Engaged Please join us Thursday November 5th as we demonstrate eight principles for designing interactive webinars by engaging you as participants! Be honest: How many of the webinars that you attend (or deliver) are boring?  The one-way nature of most webinars and web conferences misses an opportunity to engage an audience and draw on the wisdom of the group. The opportunity presented by a more interactive and collaborative approach t... Read Full Story

As technology advances and the global economy strains to stabilize, what is a leader who is increasingly pressed to produce bottom line results to do? Based on research being conducted at Morehead State University, part of the answer may be to run more effective global meetings using collaborative systems. This research indicates that collaborative systems can save time and travel-related expense while enhancing the quality of meeting outcomes. For the past seven years, I have been conducting... Read Full Story

There is exciting research going on at universities across the globe focused on understanding the basic constructs that affect team productivity and well-being.  I recently wrote about one such study that investigated the effect of positivity vs . negativity on team performance and determined the optimal ratio to help teams flourish. Very cool stuff.  http://facilitate.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/the-magic-number-that-helps-teams-flourish. It’s pretty clear why we should be interested in what ... Read Full Story

Twenty minutes into a one hour web conference I found myself starting to multi-task. I was still listening (sure!) while I checked my email. Five minutes later I was still listening (kind of) while working on a spreadsheet. When the facilitator asked a question of the group I waited for someone else to answer so I could figure out what I had missed. Does this sound familiar? As a virtual meeting facilitator I know better, but this is a common occurence in many virtual meetings, webinars and t... Read Full Story