Creating the Right Conditions for a Multi-City Hybrid Workshop
5-hour hybrid Strategic Meeting
3 different location hubs spread across Canada
3 hub cities in 2 time zones
30 participants who were all Directors at the same global company
5 workshop teams
We worked with the client to design and execute a one-day Hybrid Strategic Meeting for 30 Directors in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa. As a hybrid workshop, there were three hub locations set-up to enable participants to work together. We used Stormz for virtual engagement and as a flip chart, and the workshop was led and broadcast from Toronto with tech-support in each of the hubs.
The client approached us only 5 days prior to the meeting which meant there was very little time to plan all the logistics and prepare the participants for a successful meeting. One of the challenges with this hybrid event was ensuring that all participants were able to fully engage, without any technical issues such as audio feedback. For those based outside of the presentation location, we wanted to design the session in a way that meaningfully included them and encouraged engagement. We required multiple laptops in the each room so that participants could individually contribute to the digital “flip charts”. The technical set-up needed to be thoughtful in order to enable those online or in other locations to hear one another (e.g., muting when not speaking and taking turns speaking).
In addition to having a tech person on site to support and guide participants and encourage best practices such as muting when not speaking, we assigned a “spokesperson” for each team and asked them to put a headset on so that their mic wasn’t giving feedback if more than one person spoke. This made a considerable difference, but in future, having mics set-up for each of the groups in on-site locations would be ideal in order to ensure that no pieces of the conversation are lost.
The client loved our use of the digital flip charts. The meeting turned out to be very productive, resulting in over 100 ideas brainstormed and more than 100 action steps formulated.
© Neolé 2021