Opportunities for meeting face to face – for people in Europe and North America – are slowly opening up. Although we’ve been forced into more online encounters, it has been an opportunity for many people to discover new possibilities for interacting. Kids popping up and partners strolling across the scene behind us have breathed fresh life in how our clients or work colleagues know us. Hairdos floating weirdly across scenic zoom backgrounds will have our grandkids chuckling in disbelief when they look at the iconic images of today.

Going hybrid

I think this experience will make hybrid events fashionable. Hybrid events are those where some people are in-person and some are participating online. Media companies like Zoom, are scrambling to capture the market with meeting tools adapted for these kinds of events. 

We have been running our BEtreats as hybrid events since 2011. Back then, we saw it as the future. We thought it was crucial to develop the practice of meeting this way. I’ve reflected on what we do and what practices have worked for us in several blogposts – like this one in 2014, this one in 2016, and this one in 2020.

Meaningful connection

I also think that this hybrid trend us going to make people more demanding about the quality of all modes of interacting. If you are going to travel somewhere, it’s going to have to be for a good reason and what happens face-to-face had better take full advantage of physical presence. If you are going to participate online, you’re not going to sit through endless presentations – even those with an “interactive” veneer. The fine art of hybrid events will be to find the sweet spot where online participants are not second-class citizens, but where the tech isn’t too intrusive for in-person participants.

Three principles

Here are some of the strategies we’ve developed and how we hope to put them into practice in our new Social Learning Lab here in Sesimbra, Portugal.

First, we have three overarching design principles that drive our whole approach. That is, design for:

1. Conversations in various configurations between people about things they care about
2. Dancing in the space between knowing and not knowing
3. High value for precious time

Some heuristics

And then there are other heuristics for hybrid meetings that we are incorporating into our social learning lab. They include both physical and tech considerations.

Design elements

Physical

Technology and tech practices

A feeling of space and openness

Large windows, wide horizons, high ceilings, indoor-outdoor movement, big sky

Minimal agenda with lots of white space

In-person seating so that online participants can see different angles of the in-person spaces

Pre-event guidelines for online participants about where and how to sit and move around while participating online

A map and photos of the venue so you have a sense of the geography when in-person participants move around

Small group conversations

A diversity of attractive and comfortable places for conversations in pairs, as well as small, medium, and large groups

Contact information of all participants (face-to-face and online) so it is easy to bring someone in on different devices or applications

Breakout rooms in different formations (online with in-person, online with online)

Multiple devices and apps to bring online participants into the room (e.g., iPad sitting on table for a small group conversation)

Down time for reflection, alone or with someone else

(Quiet) places to sit and work or do nothing

Respect for own time

Frequent short pauses for people to collect their thoughts before starting a conversation

Silent time in agenda for joint written reflections in a google doc shared by both online and face-to-face participants

A shared memory

Visuals, posters, photos, videos

Hospitality

Good food, drinks and snacks

That extra touch

Welcoming, hosting approach

Time and attention to online participants even in in-between moments

Distributed leadership

Designing for initiative

Sharing in leadership tasks

A sense of belonging

Playfulness

Safe to make mistakes or a fool of yourself

Multiple places for having online participants to have their say, e.g., in the chat, on the mural, in a google doc. all of which are woven into the overall conversation,

Buddy system between online and face-to-face participants to make sure online people are fully included and to immediately address something that isn’t working, e.g., someone is blocking the camera

Seeing each other (literally)

Attention to what online participants are seeing, e.g., faces of in-person people

Visual clues for clarity over who is talking

Online presence, with good light and no bright window behind

Lifelike representation in the room, for instance, with a screen at a space at the table

Visual cues for online participants to draw attention

Together through sound

Make people aware of what sounds “in the room” give a poor experience to online folk

Point out the places where sound quality will be better for online participants

Strongly advise good quality sound

Practice mute button

In-person participants take turns in taking notes in real time to help online participants (e.g., on the chat)

Encourage use of multiple devices and to have plan B, C, and D for when things go wrong

Insist on a tech check with online participants prior to event

While these heuristics generally map onto in-person and online participation, we would emphasize that many tech design elements apply even to a totally in-person event and physical design elements apply to totally online events. Both sides can challenge and enrich the other.

The workshop generated some of the same feelings of camaraderie and joint enterprise that we get in our face-to-face workshops. The person who organized it had been at a face-to-face BEtreat the previous year, loved it, and was surprised to experience how well they compared.

The overwhelming feeling was how different it felt to a “normal” training or community meeting, where often they felt quite passive. And how bonded participants became and the inspiration and confidence they felt they were taking with them.

The tools we used were Zoom, Mural.co, Google drive, and Google photos. Why do we like these tools and what were the practices that “worked”?

Why we like Zoom

Two things about Zoom that make it the best for us: 

• One is the toggle between Speaker and Gallery view. And that your own picture appears the same size and with the others in Gallery View. 
• The other is the breakout rooms and how easy it is to set up and run with them. It’s also quite wonderful the way you can bring everyone back together at the touch of a button! Zoom sends a 60 second warning (you can adjust this).

Why we like Mural

Mural has lots of features (so many that it can look a bit daunting when you first use it). But these are the ones we appreciated most in our workshop:

• You can put LOTS on a mural (we put the agenda and activities all up in different areas on one mural). A mural size is possibly infinite and you zoom in and out of the areas you want to work on up close.
• You can divide your mural into areas (and areas within areas). 
• You can link directly to these areas (and if you click on the link, that area of the mural fits your screen). This was useful for lots of reasons. For example, in a breakout room conversation on Zoom, the group can click directly onto a link that would take them to the area where they were going to take notes or work on something together. There is no faffing about “Where do we have to go now?”
• There are two ways to navigate around a mural. One is with a small zoom in the bottom right of your screen where you can easily zoom in and out. The other is by using Outline mode (see right on the image above), which gives you the equivalent of a table of contents taking you to any object on the mural you have added to the Outline  
• You can export the whole mural, or one area of a mural to a PDF (or image file).
• It has hundreds (millions?) of icons
• You can use voting on a mural… just like putting sticky dots onto a flip chart paper.
• Mural works great on an iPad.

Why we like Google docs (or Google drive)

We mostly like the combination of google docs and the other tools. 

• We put the agenda in google docs with links to specific parts of the mural (or other places) we are going to work on. The agenda is like “home base”.
• We love (and I mean love) the way that everyone can reflect into the same google doc and see what others are writing at the same time. 
• The google folder with all the documents in it becomes a shared memory of the event created in real time.

Some practices that worked great

• We had a sketch to show what tools we were using and for what purpose. The sketch linked the tools with a physical map that already existed in people’s imagination.
• We took mini-breaks every hour or so to stretch or look out the window.
• We had a shared photo album (google photos) where each day people shared and talked about pics they had put up. We did this in Zoom during the half hour or so before the official start time. 
• We paused at regular intervals to invite people to put their reflections, insights, and ongoing questions into a shared google document. One person’s reflection can trigger another person’s aha. And what people write becomes part of a shared narrative about their learning.

Some final thoughts

Most surprising to us was how fast three hours went by. It occurred to us that a full day online might be less tiring than a full day face-to-face (when everyone is online). Three days seemed about the right length of time.

We also reflected that we should only do online workshops for people who are going to be working with online communities. It is completely different to “do” community online than to talk about how to do it while you are in a face-to-face setting (duh!) It was immensely satisfying to see how people could really feel the difference between developing a social learning space online and some of the more transmission mode activities that had become accustomed to doing in an online community meeting. 

Jacquie felt she got a lot out of it and we really enjoyed taking a deep dive into specific aspects of her projects, triggering new ideas, helping to consolidate dispersed ones, analyzing texts and situations, and being a critical friend to others.

It got us thinking how much we enjoy the creativity involved in customizing our frameworks and approaches to diverse situations and people. We have now widened our offerings of BEtreats (Bev Etienne retreats) to private and custom ones as well as our regular annual workshop in Grass Valley.

And let us know, if you would like to consider one for yourself or your team.

There is always a moment when face-to-face folk wave good-bye to those participating online. The feeling on both sides is one of friends parting. What is it that gets us to that moment?

We’ve written before about our experience of blending online and face-to-face (here and here) but I thought I’d revisit the topic with our ongoing learning about what works for us – and what we could do better.

(Main photo is a screenshot from an online participant)

The tech set-up

Wiki
As usual, we have a wiki for our online home. It’s the first meeting place for online and face-to-face folk.  We share the program and resources and each participant has their own page for reflections and for sharing the project they are working on. We start using the wiki before people arrive – for personal introductions, signing up to a leadership group, and sharing travel logistics.  Everyone is invited to connect on Skype and have each other’s contact information before the workshop begins. This makes it quicker to connect in small groups during different activities.

Devices
There were a number of innovations this year. We got rid of the big screen where we used Adobe Connect to project slides along with the online participants. A screen sends the energy to the wall rather than keeping it in the group space. This year slides were on the wiki, which people accessed on their own device. It’s easier these days because a) “everyone” has a device and b) devices and portable computers take up considerably less space than they used to, so the table doesn’t feel crammed.  Our concern that people would then have their nose in their device rather than with the group did not happen. People are so used to having their own device at meetings that it felt very natural and did not detract from conversations.

Skype
We used to use Adobe Connect for visuals and Skype for sound. But without the need to project slides, we only used Skype for the synchronous discussions. The sound and image quality in Skype is so much better. And combining Adobe and Skype occupies too much bandwidth for people who don’t have great connectivity.

Displays
Instead of the big screen, we had a high-resolution Apple Thunderbolt display for the online folks in the room. It made us feel like they were sitting with us around the table.  As before, we also connected into the Skype conversations with a phone attached to a selfie-stick so that there were close-ups of the person talking.

WhatsApp
Another innovation this year is that we used WhatsApp for side conversations rather that the chat function of Adobe or Skype. This worked really well for keeping up a social conversation that included everyone – face-to-face and online folks. And the conversation could continue on any device, whether we were on Skype or not.

Tech notes: The sound quality from our MXL AC404 USB conference microphone (price $83.99) is excellent, better than ones we’ve used before. (Aside: it’s also light and compact so ideal for traveling). We still use the Logitech C930e laptop webcam (price $104.28) with its wide-angle view.

Some practices

Here are some of the things we do that people have said work:

Gather first
We start at 8:00 a.m. with breakfast and coffee. Online folk are brought in on a device and join the breakfast conversation. I don’t think it would generate the same buzz if we got down straight away to work at the table.

Buddy up
Everyone has a turn at being a buddy with an online person. They become the eyes and ears for them in the room and make sure they don’t get left behind. There is something about caring for someone that creates quite a bond.

Switch leading
Everyone has a chance to lead a session, which means we get some people leading from a face-to-face position and some from an online position. It’s a good switch of modes. We even had one session where Etienne ended up participating online (even though he was just sitting in another room). That also helped to equalize the conversation.

Extend your “home
Every artifact that is created during the workshop goes in the wiki. It’s as if the wiki was an extension of the physical building – or the physical building is an extension of the wiki. Not only does this make everything (except food and drink) accessible, it also helps us create a good record of each workshops.

What doesn’t work

Too many people talking at once
Face-to-face folk can sit round a table and have multiple conversations going in parallel. It simply doesn’t work if you are online. Everything is going through the same microphone and it’s a noisy garbled mess.

No buddy
Sometimes we forget to assign or remind a buddy and an online person gets left on a table waiting … That doesn’t work!

Busy busy
If you participate face-to-face you tend to seal off the four days for a workshop. But if you are participating online it can be tempting to try and squeeze in some meetings. We tell people that this is a four-day experience, whether you are online or face-to-face. It’s an immersive experience and not one you can dip in and out of. You need to be locked away from your family and work colleagues.

Why participate online?

Practical reasons
People participate online for a number of reasons, including travel costs to California, visa issues to the U.S., needing to be somewhere etc.

Pacing yourself
But there are people who prefer the online experience. We’ve heard a similar line from several people who have participated in both face-to-face and online mode. They say that online participation is better for reflection. They find the face-to-face version intense and with competing calls to your attention. For example, at breaks you are drawn into yet more interesting conversations with people you want to hear from. But if you are online it’s easier to gather your thoughts, reflect, and work at your own pace.

Online charisma
We have also noticed that the people who prefer online often perform better when they are online. They have a charismatic online persona and can hold the group’s attention in ways that weren’t so noticeable in face-to-face interactions. It is a curious observation.

What we need to get better at

Leveraging online presence
What are the advantages that an online person has over a face-to-face person in a small group activity? Our activities tend to assume that an online person has to be “brought in”, but what about “flip” activities where online folks have the advantage and bring in the face-to-face folks.

Exploring vulnerability
Participating online in a face-to-face has some similarities to being in a wheelchair. People can talk over your head, or as if you weren’t there. You are dependent on someone “carrying you” (on a device) to join a conversation. You are at the mercy, to some extent, of someone who is participating face-to-face. Feeling vulnerable is an important dimension of learning. How can we turn this online experience of vulnerability by an online participant into a learning opportunity for all?

Is anyone else out there exploring the boundaries of blending online and face-to-face (with a budget of your average community)?

• State-of-the-art for principles and practice – July 7 – 10
• Cutting-edge to explore emerging issues – July 14 – 17
• Academic for theory and research – July 21 – 24

We keep the numbers small so we can work on each workshop member’s case together. And we keep the ratio of face-to-face:online at 2:1. So register for a place soon if you are sure you are coming!

And if you don’t want to commit yet, but want to stay in the loop, then just register your interest here.

If it’s hard to see the visual, this is what it says…

Social learning leader (pink circle):

• invites others to engage in thinking through challenges and opportunities
• elicits stories of practice rather than advice in the abstract
• the practice is the curriculum
• doesn’t hold back what she knows
• an agenda is created with insiders of the community or network
• the community is responsible for the outcomes

Teachers (yellow circle):

• teacher comes from a place of knowing
• the curriculum defines the content and the practice
• teacher may hold back what she knows in the service of pedagogy
• teacher is responsible for the agenda
• teacher is responsible for the outcomes

Overlapping space (orange circle)

• preparation work
• listens to needs of community/students
• reflective practitioners
• good sense of design for learning
• different degrees of bossiness and directiveness
• accountable to stakeholders

“I feel very taken care of”

“I could only see legs in that last session”

“Yikes, I’m feeling sea-sick”

No, those comments don’t come from a class of kumbaya gymnastics but from online participants in our BEtreat workshop for social learning leaders who were being carried around on laptops.

We’ve been developing our skills for integrating online and face-to-face participants in our workshops and are definitely coming closer to making it a full experience with fewer technical hitches. Our ambition has always been to be able to do it smoothly with technology that is within range of non-specialists.

Almost gone are the days of “hello can you hear us?” … A combination of better quality sound on most devices, people’s adeptness at using different technologies, and a different room set up has all contributed to a better sound experience.

Our new addition to the hardware at this workshop was a grip handle for a smartphone. The grip handle turned an iPhone (with camera on) into a talking stick so that online people could get a close-up of the person who was talking. (Proviso: handle design flaw overcome with a work-around of blu-tac).

The (adapted) handle worked like a charm. “The room” and “The talking stick” are both logged into Adobe Connect and appear on video alongside the onliners showing both the perspective and the detail.

As for activities we made the online folk the “host” during the (small group) café conversations. They sat as talking heads at each table summarizing key points and guiding the conversation while face-to-face folk had to move tables. Their appreciation was for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it is tiring to be moved from room to room as you watch the walls swoop by and make sense of new angles of furniture and body parts.

Some other principles we have gathered for a good face-to-face/online experience include:

• Ratio of face-to-face to online (2:1)
• Tech check and preparation with online people in advance (essential)
• Keeping a chat going in the whole group sessions (ask for volunteers)
• Multiple devices to bring people in (each device affords a different kind of presence)
• Easy access to all contact details – Skype, email, and phone (don’t leave online people hanging when things go wrong)
• Design activities that put online people in control (it’s tiring to feel dependent)
• Playful inventiveness in connecting with people “on the other side” (enjoyment of the challenge from face-to-face and online folk)

If you are thinking of joining us in 2015, these are the dates:

July 7 – 10 (State-of-the-art)

July 14 – 17 (Cutting-edge)

July 21 – 24 (Academic)

Keep up with early bird and registration dates by subscribing to our blog, newsletter, or twitter. And drop us a line, if you want to know more.

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Registration is now open for online or face-to-face participation

Early bird registration until April 30. Spaces are limited as the workshops are small and focused on working with the cases you bring.

• July 7 – 10: State-of-the art professional for a solid grounding in the practice
• July 14 – 17: Cutting-edge professional for exploring emerging issues
• July 21 – 24: Academic for theory and research

See a summary of previous BEtreats here.

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Lovely surroundings, delicious food and warm hospitality at the Estate was a wonderful way to launch our first BEtreat workshops outside our home in California.

As well as professionals and academics from South Africa we also had people participating from Sweden, France, Nigeria and Tanzania. Joining us online was someone from New York who was getting up at 3:00 a.m. to join us each day (applause) and someone from Italy.

It was a great mix of people and some deep dives into interesting cases. We were happy (and relieved) to know that we could reproduce the BEtreat atmosphere conducive to a sharp collective inquiry in another part of the world – both for face-to-face and online participants.

Hopefully this is the first of more to come…

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