I’m fairly well-versed in planning and facilitating fun, productive workshops with clients. Yesterday I facilitated a 12-person remote branding workshop for a new @superfriendlyco client. It went well! I’ll throw a few notes in this thread, but feel free to ask me anything.

We used Zoom on an 1.5 hour call. I planned for some workshop exercises to use the breakout rooms feature, but we didn’t need it since the conversation flow worked well as a group. (I imagine this had more to do with client’s close-knit team than anything I did as a facilitator.)

Prior to the workshop, I planned an agenda — intros and set up, four exercises, last thoughts and next steps. Well-planned agendas are the secret sauce to making workshops feel snappy, fun, and productive. As a facilitator I can manage the clock and adjust on the fly as needed.

I put all the exercise questions (a mix of short answer, fill in the blank, and multiple choice) into a Google Form we sent to everyone day of. That form auto populates a spreadsheet, so as soon as we were done, we had all the data. (Yay no sorting through photos of whiteboards!)

Good facilitators have a responsibility to make sure participants feel heard and valuable, and we don’t waste their time. Our energy, clock management, choosing the right rabbits to chase, etc. are all super important. Remote is no different, but our energy has to be even higher.

As travel is off the table for for the foreseeable future, remote workshops are going to be more frequent and necessary. I look forward to experimenting and iterating how to use the medium to everyone’s benefit. (I can already see how it helps introverts “speak up” more.) AMA!