Can the specific effects of the World Café method (networking, fast exchange of ideas and experiences in a fun and creative way) be reached in a virtual context too?
The World Café
The World Café method is all about quick networking among participants and a fast exchange of ideas, opinions and experiences in an informal environment. In a face-to-face setting, the participants are divided in groups (4-6 persons) who sit together around a table. The groups’ composition changes 3 times, to stimulate a high level of networking and exchange of impressions. The possibility to write and draw on the table in order to visualize the points of discussions is a vital part of the exercise.
The World Café has developed into one of the leading workshop methods. It can be used as prelude for introduction of ideas and participants, to develop a vision as well as for discussion about topics during the implementation phase.
The virtual challenge
The method was developed for real-life situations, so the question is: can this method be applied to virtual workshops without a loss of quality? Is it practically possible, and will networking and understanding evolve at the same speed? Our experiment, using Vitero software with about 40 participants from the Xing Group ‘Virtuelle Moderation’ shows: a virtual World Café is possible!
The experiment: how did it work?
All participants came together in the plenary. In Vitero, participants ‘sit’ with their portrait pictures around a ‘table’, that can be used as presentation board for desktop and application sharing simultaneously. Two presentations served as background to subsequent World Café discussions, around the topic: ‘Experience with the virtual world in businesses’. The participants were then divided into 6 groups. In three café rounds (20 minutes each) they discussed the following questions: What is our own experience with the virtual world? What are the challenges? What kind of support is needed to work in virtual worlds?
Each working group had a ‘moderator’, who kept an eye on the results too. The participants had the possibility to write on cards that were visibly placed on the whiteboard. So the table board from the face-to-face World Café is there! In the summary plenary session, the group moderators reported, showing and using the whiteboards to share the outcomes, followed by open space for discussion.
Organize it yourself?
Some practical experiences and tips for those who want to organize such a Virtual World Café:
- The virtual tools and platforms strongly influence the design of a World Café. So be aware of the specific possibilities and make an inventory of the strengths and weaknesses of the platforms.
- Breakout-sessions are a particular challenge in a virtual environment. Connecting to voice communication, application sharing for presentations and collaboratively working on whiteboards with over 10 participants always are prone to the risk of connection instability. Another risk is switching from plenary sessions to group sessions and back. Continuously changing group arrangements can hamper the flow of discussion, by which the deepening of conversation, which is one of the main benefits of a face-to-face setting, might be difficult to reach.
- Another challenge is reaching the goal of a self-regulated discussion, one of the particular strengths of the World Café. The host in a World Café setting isn’t a classical moderator, while most web conference platforms are optically and technically designed for such a role. So it is important to think about how to promote self-regulation in the working groups! In each group, there should be at least 5 participants. In a virtual setting, more input is needed to inspire other participants to continue with the discussion.
Conclusion
For participants with experiences in working with online tools and platforms, who won’t be discouraged by technical problems and who can endure a 3-hours conference session behind a computer, this design is a suitable method. It approaches the specific benefits of a face-to-face World Café in many ways. The possibility to bring together people from different places, without too much effort, to participate in a productive meeting makes this method a powerful instrument, also in the virtual and blended world. It can be applied at the start of a process, but also as a stand-alone activity to quickly address different aspects of a complex theme in a way that is fun and makes you eager to learn and discuss more…
And what’s next? Perhaps we should change our mindset and design platforms in a new way. Not focused on how to recreate the same situation as in a face-to-face setting online, but on how to reach the goals and particular effects of the World Café in such a virtual environment. Even new goals might become feasible in such a virtual working environment: The development of a World Café 3.0? Try it yourself!
Virtual Leadership Workshop at the Königswieser Innovationswerkstatt Personal in March 2011
The role of Human Resource Management in establishing new collaboration patterns and rules
In the era of globalization, digital formats and solutions are becoming increasingly important. And this is particularly true in the context of communication and leadership, which are closely linked to field of human resource management.
How can distributed teams work together effectively? Which management approach is appropriate for these new forms of work? What does management need to learn and perhaps even unlearn in order to motivate employees to collaborate across national borders and time zones?
Human resources management is involved in many ways. While for working in face to face situations we rely on established rules, there are no such generally accepted rules for cooperation in the virtual world. How do we deal with an IM message to colleagues? Are they treated as official statements and can be quoted in protocols and agreements or are they just bits of conversation? Are appointments for a telephone conference to be taken as seriously as a trip to a project meeting in a “real” location. It is about how we work together, how we create a collaborative culture. Workplace design is clearly one of the tasks of HR management. These cultural elements also must be addressed in trainings: Leadership training and team development. Also a domain of HR Management.
Next topic is aptitude testing and personal assessments: The selection of the right managers and team members who are best qualified to work in virtual worlds and have to manage projects in distributed team situations. Are still the same requirement profiles applicable or do we need to re-write them?
These and other related questions will be discussed in our Workshop on “Virtual Leadership” within the Königswieser “Innovationswerkstatt Personal” in Berlin March 28th and 29th. Sari Stenfors, president of Radical Inclusion will share some thoughts with us on the changes in collaboration, the new role of leaders and the requirements for HR Management. In a combination of f2f and virtual activities we will discuss the implications for our business.
The conference folder and further information are available at:
http://www.koenigswieser.net/akademie/veranstaltungen.html
download the flyer (in German).
Introducing a new project management platform? Virtual gardening cures change resistance and builds energetic teams
It is often scary to start using new tools. One has to change work routines and invest time into learning new systems. What managers may interpret as resistance to change is quite often just lack of understanding why it was necessary to introduce a new tool in the first instance. The old system may have been bad, but people had figured out ways to get along with it. Changing to something new is always difficult.
I would like to tell a story about the introduction of a new project management platform which did not only serve to increase transparency, but at the same time helped in team-building and initiated profound discussions about the structure of the project. 
This story is about a European network project team consisting of 6 different organizations in 5 different countries. About 15 people are part of the core team. To manage our project, and for several functions such as sharing and storing documents, messaging each other, preparing virtual and face-to-face workshops, we needed a common electronic platform. Some of the group had already been using Pbwiki and felt good about it. However, there was some initial resistance to use this system as the main base of our work. Some people complained that the system was complicated and counter intuitive to their usual routines. In order to increase the acceptance, we decided to form a “gardening” team to make sure everybody would gain the necessary skills to use the platform more efficiently.
Let me explain how virtual “gardening” works. We designed and implemented a scheme where 3 people would meet virtually – one would always be an experienced wiki user and two would be new “gardeners”. The team would discuss the structure of the wiki, explore different functions, and create or change the structure according to the needs of the project. They would document their work, and one of the new gardeners would then carry on the learnings by becoming part of the next team.
When we embarked on this scheme, I was afraid that people would neither take the time to meet nor to report, and at the end one would have to spend a lot of time managing the process. However, to our surprise the gardening process created very different dynamics. People enjoyed meeting in small groups and “gardening” in our workspace. Project members, whose term to work in the garden hadn’t come yet, asked to speed up the process because they got so excited about the stories they heard from those who had been out in the fields already. When there weren’t any weeds left, the gardeners started to think about the general design and would spend time reflecting on the structure of the project, which otherwise would not have come up in that phase of the project.
I was thrilled to observe the process. We found out that “gardening” is a great way for inter-generational learning and team building. It helps to keep the energy up between face-to-face meetings and encourages team members to discuss the dynamics of the project and its priorities. Unintentionally, the gardening project became one of our main project routines and it is keeping us together. Furthermore, the “gardening” process manages itself in a self-organized way. I warmly recommend “gardening” to teams that are introducing new virtual project management platforms. If you need any assistance in setting it up, please let me know. I would also be interested to hear from your experiences.
Today when we design a training program for a client it’s often about dealing with the challenges and possibilities of global teams and how to run virtual meetings. These are the new skills that people would like to acquire including an understanding for virtual leadership and how to build trust in these settings. While these are very useful learning objectives, the problem is, that in many organizations the basic building blocks of collaboration – how we run our meetings – are taken for granted, but are not in place. The reality is, that most face to face meetings are still held in rather ineffective ways. We waste a lot of time when there is no clear agenda, process and outcomes and if we add remote participants to these meetings they often feel nobody realizes they are there and they cannot participate at all.
This is why we would like to invite you to join us for a two day workshop on:
“The basics of meeting facilitation – how to get the best results with a group”.
Here you can download the invitation: Facilitation_training
To register send an email to Juliane (at) radical-inclusion.com
Recently, I had the opportunity to design and successfully sell a four hours virtual training course which in fact developed from a face-to-face training concept. Anybody who is in the training market knows that the industry is extremely competitive and loaded with uncertainty. Many training providers offer a wide range of open courses on different subjects and then end up cancelling quite a few of them because of insufficient subscriptions. The same happens to me all the time.
In the given case, it was tricky. I had developed a one day training and licensing seminar on The Change Journey, an innovative concept that helps organizations and the individuals within to navigate through complex change processes. The original intention was to market face-to-face courses in different places of the world. As life goes, registrations came in for some of the places and they didn’t for other places. On the other side, the feedback I received indicated that there was a great interest in the subject by many people around the world. So I decided to go virtual.
The sales process for the virtual course turned out to be easy. It helped a lot that I had already set up an lively web community based on a Ning group. Loaded with content, so far the group has attracted more than 400 participants. This is a good base for marketing. Feeding the participants with information about the concept, and writing them a gentle note every three to four weeks helped to keep interaction levels high. It was then a matter of sending out invitations. Ning (or any other alike web community platform) allows for setting up events, and linking them to an external registration page (in my case, RegOnline), which handles the rest.
The good thing about a virtual course is that you have very little costs – what you mainly need is a training platform (see below). So, it doesn’t matter whether you have five or ten participants – even you can do it with a single one, turning the course into a coaching session. The main question remained how to transform a one day face-to-face course into a shorter virtual session without losing too much on the interactive parts.
My assumption (and my experience) so far had been limited to webinars of one to one and a half hours. From the perspective of a learner I had felt that after sixty minutes, the attention span declines rapidly. When being the trainer, after a ninety minutes virtual learning event, I felt as much exhausted as after a full day’s face-to-face training course.
The challenge I had set myself was to host a virtual training and licensing workshop for the Change Journey, a contemporary concept of facilitating change in uncertain environments. Instead of scheduling a series of three to four shorter events, I decided to go for the experiment. After that experience, I feel confident that it is indeed possible to create a virtual learning environment that keeps participants interested and active for four hours and that does not drain the entire energy of the trainer. I repeated this experience several times, with eight, four and one participant respectively. It worked pretty well in all cases.
These are the essentials to a successful four hours virtual training course:
1. Select a platform that is conducive for an interactive learning design
There are many platforms out there which can be used for interactive webinars. When selecting the platform, a few things matter:
- integration of voice, video, presentation, chat, whiteboard, drawing tools, facilities for breakout sessions.
- easy to understand and master even for participants who have little multimedia experience
- technical stability of the application
It is quite likely that in a mixed group some people have never or only occasionally participated in webinars. It is important that the functionality is intuitive. The critical moment comes when people login to the platform: they get into a new environment, have to connect their voice, understand the different functionalities and bring themselves into a learner state.
It took me months to experiment with different platforms, test their stability, get feedback on user friendliness, etc. Once I have decided for a specific platform, I don’t want to change so quickly because I want to be sure that I master all the functions. The platform of my choice is WebEx – it’s not necessarily the best but it works for me.
A word of warning: if you want to conduct regular virtual events, don’t rely on free or demo versions – you wouldn’t possibly chose a venue for a face-to-face training only because it is free of charge.
2. Organize technical introduction sessions before the actual event
As I mentioned before, the critical moment is when participants enter the new environment. You don’t want to spend the first 30 minutes of your training course with technical instructions. Even if you know your platform well, your participants don’t, and there are always technical challenges. Also, you want to set the right tone from the beginning, create a nice atmosphere and be the master of the group dynamics. I usually offer technical introduction sessions some days before the actual training course (and make participation in these prep session compulsory).
3. Design a highly interactive agenda appealing to different learning styles
The attention span in virtual learning environments is much shorter than in face-to-face seminars. If not entertained, participants will divert themselves to other activities: read emails, check other websites or do something offline. At the same time, virtual training sessions are often more exhausting. Here are a few tips that help you to design virtual training sessions that keep people interested:
- Plan for one ten minutes break every hour.
- Prepare an entertaining presentation. Obtain photos of the participants and mount them on a slide. Ask people in the introduction to identify themselves.
- Early into the workshop, give ample room for people to talk about themselves.
- Set up several break out sessions in which small groups of 3-4 discuss certain issues and report back to the plenary.
- Ask open questions. Make sure that everybody contributes (you might call on individuals and ask them for their input).
- Give assignments to participants.
- Use all the possibilities that your platform offers.
- Restrict the use of video broadcasting of the participants – video easily distracts; at the same time, it is hard to control yourself for four hours, and one tends to forget that others are watching you (that can be quite annoying).
And then: enjoy the experience to teach from your living room.
Four days left for the opening of the virtual unconference that our team has been working on for over two months. Yes, it has taken quite a bit of effort even though we had a similar event last year. We are all close to a nervous breakdown and our computers are overheating. Hey, that’s good news – rehearsals should reveal new problems so that the premiere will run smoothly.
All the signs indicate that the Radical Real Time – Making the Best of Collaborative Worlds: Physical, Virtual and Blended Collaboration will break all records: 145 participants from 30 countries have signed up – just now, somebody from China showed up!
Just to remind you what this is about: Radical Real-Time is an annual unconference, a gathering that is participant-driven and centered around a central theme of “collaboration”. RRT is organized by the Radical Inclusion team to explore the use of social media and web 2.0 technology for self-organized gatherings.
Curious? Want to know more? Check the latest news from our conference website. Want to host a session? It’s not too late . Just want to take a peak? Fine, but practice a bit to be sure you manage a few technical preliminaries. We have kept the barrier of entry as low as possible, but always good to be prepared.
have you decided to attend? Maybe this is the time to make plans on the logistics of your arrival. Will you be arriving alone? Will you arrive comfortable and confident? Or will you be stressed and insecure? No need to be anxious. Arrive in style – arrive with a friend. Visit our MemberMix and let our matching application choose you a “Conference Buddy”. Together with your “Conference Buddy” you will arrive in style and figure out the latest scoop. Enroll in our matching service right now. Matching will take place at midnight GMT Wednesday.
Radical Real-Time curtain will lift on Saturday June 5 at 2PM GMT. Be there.
80 Colleagues and friends from 17 countries have registered for our Unconference. 4 breakout sessions have been offered so far. Thank you for this fantastic response to our first announcement.
We now would like you to spread the word and invite further contacts and interested parties to this upcoming exiting event. We also would like to encourage you to convene a breakout session with a topic of your special interest.
For those of you less familiar with the instruments and tools used in virtual breakout sessions, we plan to offer training sessions well ahead of the event, giving you the opportunity to prepare for this role. So please sign up as conveners for a breakout session and we will soon publish training dates.
We will keep you posted on further developments. Please do not hesitate to comment and make proposals on any issue related to the conference since this event is based upon the principals of self organization and strives on the participants’ motivation and enthusiasm.
“Making the Most of Collaborative Worlds”
You are cordially invited to take part in the second annual Radical Real-Time Conference on Saturday, June 5, 2010, 2pm – 5:00 pm GMT
Radical Inclusion is once again pleased to provide the platform for this self-organized virtual unconference. In our last year’s unconference participants felt that the burning issues of the 21st century could only be solved by using new collaborative methods, changing the ways we work together, and finding novel approaches to co-operation. Thus, this year’s conference, titled “Making the Most of Collaborative Worlds – Physical, Virtual and Blended Collaboration”, focuses on understanding the changes that are required at individual, team, and organizational levels to deal with these issues.
We are also announcing a new name for the conference, Radical Real-Time. It reflects our radically different approach to collaborative engagement. Thank you for your ideas and contributions and especially to Christina Jordan for coming up with the name! We feel that “Real-Time Virtual Collaboration (RTVC)” taught us much during its first year and has deserved this new forward-looking name.
The purpose of the Radical Real-Time unconference is to provide a global forum where we all can come together, explore topics of common interest, learn, and create sustainable actions. Our unconference structure is loosely based on the principles of Open Space Technology, which has revolutionized large group gatherings by allowing the passion and responsibility of relevant stakeholders to drive the conference agenda.
Radical Real-Time participants will be able to explore topics most important to them, and convene breakout sessions using a variety of virtual tools. Besides proposing a topic of interest, session conveners may also choose the collaboration platform of their choice. If you are a newbie to the use of virtual tools, the Radical Inclusion team will be on hand to provide technical support. Radical Real-Time conference is free of charge.
Harrison Owen, the inventor of Open Space Technology gave this feedback on our last year’s event:
That was a great tour of a marvelous adventure! Cyberspace IS Open Space. And the Internet works exactly the same way as every Open Space — totally self-organizing. I think what you are doing is identifying various aspects of the Internet that make the whole experience more useful. Sort of like finding new rooms in the venue, Temple Bells, Talking Sticks, etc.
Although there is no fee for the conference, you must register to gain access.
If you want to build a wiki, don’t drum up people by sending them emails and adding them as users. Rather make them long for access to the important information your wiki contains. (Juliane Neumann, Radical Inclusion)
Lately, our group has been reflecting on what it takes from an organization to implement effective Virtual Collaboration (VC) processes. The question is not a new one – the idea of collective Knowledge Management (KM) has been around since the dawn of the WWW (and even before), but the great visions have turned out to be disappointingly shallow promises. We have come to the point where the tools have reached such maturity, adaptability, and user-friendliness that we all cannot help but rub our eyes asking why the adoption rates of virtual collaboration are far below even the most pessimistic expectations.
How does KM fit into the concept of VC? Wikipedia gives the following definitions:
Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice. (Source: Wikipedia).
Virtual Collaboration – Originated with the advent of video conferencing technologies provided over the internet. Two or more people working together to accomplish a task without the use of face to face interaction. Early examples of virtual collaboration include Audio Conferencing, Video Conferencing, or Computer mediated communication. With the advent of web 2.0 interactive capabilities virtual collaboration took on a much broader meaning, allowing for the full spectrum of activities and behaviors that are required for two or more people to come together and co-create new work through a process similar to stigmergy in living systems. (Source: Wikipedia)
We believe that this definition of VC is not broad enough. For us in Radical Inclusion, VC encompasses the whole spectrum of synchronous, near time and asynchronous tools and methods with which people can creat content, exchange ideas, work together on documents, make decisions, etc. without meeting face-to-face. In this sense, KM is mainly covering the asynchronous parts of VC.
So, the tools are there but people just don’t use them – why is that so? We believe it is for a multitude of reasons, including the following:
- People driving VC and KM projects are not the potential beneficiaries of the VC tools. VC and KM are categorized as “IT issues”, and the users are rarely involved in design and implementation of the collaboration tools.
- Knowledge and information are organizational currencies, and they are not given away for free. We share information when we get something in return, and knowledge can be a powerful asset in power play situations.
- Collaboration is a question of trust and loyalties, and these ties don’t often follow official organizational structures. People have contradicting loyalties as most organizations have implicit and explicit organizational structures. Also, organizational boundaries in collaboration are not that clear as people adhere to and trust individuals and groups outside of the organization.
- Collaboration is not encouraged. Few organizations have reward systems that encourage collaboration, and even fewer have a collaboration strategy.
- Effective physical collaboration is different from effective virtual collaboration. Most organizations try to translate traditional forms of collaboration, i.e. face-to-face meetings, into virtual collaboration. Thinking that a face-to-face meeting is a pinnacle of collaboration neglects to take into account the new and different opportunities that synchronous, near time, and asynchronous VC tools offer. Virtual meetings that mirror face-to-face meeting processes end up being frustrating experiences because of technical shortcomings and poor virtual process skills.
- General attitudes towards virtual collaboration are not favourable. VC is usually considered as a second-hand substitute for physical face-to-face meetings. Few people believe that they can be effective, efficient, and most of all, fun!
- People do not resist change as a given. However, all people have concerns, purposes and circumstances that matter to them. If people feel that their issues are acknowledged and respected, they will support change.
- Change has its boundaries and limits. Change is partly given to us, and everything is not negotiable. There will always be conditions that we need to accept and work around. Also, we have to respect that usually the entire organization will not change.
- Problems become our friends little by little. We need to start small in the beginning of our change journey and improve the process along the way.
- Everybody needs to become an innovator. Widen the circle of involvement as much as possible and get people to buy in. Identify or create containers where new thinking emerges and smart systems can multiply.
- Multilevel communication about change is essential. Connect people to the content of the change and to each other by virtual and face-to-face means.
We have only just begun to understand what it takes to catalyze effective collaboration – in both the real and the virtual world!
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This is the World Banana Forum, a multi stake holder network of people who are involved in different parts of the banana supply chain – from small Latin American farmers or unionists to the large retailers like Wall Mart, and also NGOs, Fair Trade organizations etc. The meeting was organized by a team working for the FAO who had already reserved the rooms and made an agenda, when they were sending out an urgent request for facilitators. A very tough assignment considering all the conditions: rooms were not at all suitable for collaborative work, a big group about 190 people- three languages, a very ambitious agenda and little time to get organized. Two facilitatours from Radical Inclusion (Holger Nauheimer und Juliane Neumann) accepted the challenge.
One of the main objectives of the gathering was to start a collaboration between the members of the forum who had met in the past only to present their statements, but felt that it was time to actually talk to each other. The key topics had been identitfied and heterogenous working groups were supposed to get started on the topics.
Our concern as facilitators was especially the sustainability of the event and therefore to produce a proper documentation that could be used and accessed also after the meeting. We set up a basic wiki (pbworks.com), created pages for each thematic group- one in english and one in “international”, what ended up to be in Spanish and we introduced the tool in the beginning of the conference. Each working group, sometimes 30-40, people had a person from the organizing team to support the group work and most of the time that person helped to get into the page, explained the basics and sometimes even provided the computer. However, major part of the break out spaces was self-organized, in a semi Open Space Technology format.
As its often with wikis, there is a small hurdle in the beginning, but at the end of the conference there were already over 50 active users. It shows that a wiki is a great tool enabling bottom-up documentation of semi-structured meetings.
(images: freshplaza.it)
