If you are planning to bring some of the high value experts spread across
the globe to a common platform. You are generally left with two options.
One, ship all of them to a pre-decided place, make them sit in a
conference room and forget the rest of the world. But the second part of the
statement never happens, as everyone will have on string or another attached to
him and sooner or later he will start thinking about the work that he has left
unattended on his table rather than what you believe they should be doing at
that point in time.
Don’t forget the costs attached to such and exercise, which in some
cases could run up to hundred thousand dollars or more?
Option two, the “Video Conferencing”! Yes, this happens to the most
appropriate substitute of what we mentioned in option number one. Take all the resources,
put them into Videoconferencing facility enabled rooms and get started. This is a great option and a great solution.
But, can you possibly cover each and every location across the globe with a
solution as expensive as that. Remember some of your high value resources could
be at offices where the company thought it would not make any business sense to
invest in to a capital intensive solution like Videoconferencing.
This was the problem our team faced, and as we all know necessity is the
mother of all innovations. Then came the idea, of utilizing the available
resources in a way never heard of in the organization and all the pieces fitted
into each other like no one could have thought off. So, Wiki and Instant
Messengers became the white boards and Teleconference Bridges became breakout
rooms, while AT&T Connect played its part as a perfect host.
Sounds interesting? Well, then why not replicate the success in your own
team and enjoy sitting in your office, while working on one of the most
innovative projects with your teammates sitting across the globe. Sharing ideas
and exchanging notes and of course saving those dollars.
To begin with, let’s go through important set of activities that you
need to perform in order to create a successful virtual workshop.
1. The Idea
Sit down and think, chat, blog or use any tool you
want to figure out your goals for this workshop and make a list of expectations
that you and your team might have from the workshop. Make sure that you share
this with everyone who will be on the team. This might serve two important purposes;
one the workshop becomes everyone’s ownership and two, someone might come up
with some valuable suggestions that may improve the course of your workshop.
If your organization has a Wiki, creating a team space on the wiki will
become your first step towards initiating an online workshop. You can post your
thoughts and ideas around the workshop on the home page and invite all the team
members to contribute.
Alternatively here is a link to the Google Sites. This will not only
help you initiate a space but it will also guide you on how to use a
collaborative site effectively.
2. Setting the objective
Figure out the expected outcome of the entire workshop and put some
objective statements in place. Then pick the one that is closest to your
desired goal and covers almost all the aspects of the expected outcome. Avoid
picking up an objective statement that is blurred and does not communicate the
idea with clarity, because this will be the first step towards making sure that
the stake holders or the participants would be attracted to join such an
initiative.
You may use tools like wiki, blog or forum to seek inputs from other
members of the organization to achieve the desired objective statement. This
will also help you to familiarize some prospective participants to the
collaborative tools that may be used during the workshop.
3. Getting the right people together
Break down your objective into smaller sub-objectives and make sure that
each of the sub-objectives gives you a clear idea about the kind of resources
or individuals you have to bring onboard for the workshop. You may decide upon the prospective
participants based on their area of expertise, organizational hierarchy or simply
the pull effect they would create if they are a part of that workshop.
4. The timing
If your workshop is geographically spread and the participants are
expected to be based out of multiple time zones, you will have to make sure
that you make the most out of the working hours available during a workday. Try
using repeat or summarizing sessions if handling the different time zones
becomes a challenge.
5. Communication- the key to success
Make sure that the communication channels are exploited to the maximum.
Let the information flow freely, much before the actual workshop is conducted.
Since this is going to be an online forum and you cannot expect everyone to be
comfortable with the tools and the methodologies that will be used. Ideally you
should give the participants enough time to explore the tools beforehand and
answer their quarries.
You should communicate the timings, objective and the expected outcome
formally as well as informally with the participants. Also, if you expect the
participants to do some amount of pre workshop exercise that should be
communicated in the invites and on the wiki for everyone, to not only read but
contribute. This may enhance the agenda of your workshop. Having participants profiles on the wiki could be
of great advantage. This may not only help participants to know each other, but
also help the visibility of your workshop.
Here is a list of best practices that you can add on the home page of
your team space. This will help the participants to utilize this tool to its maximum
potential.
Here are some Best Practices:
-
Make sure you are fully and correctly listed in the Team
page
-
Look at what has changed regularly (hint: click on the envelop,
top right corner, on the workshop page to get changes emailed to you)
-
Work with your assigned team to author/edit your pages
-
Review the work of other teams and provide edits that deepen,
extend, and refine the content
-
If you have questions, use the add comment feature at the
bottom of the page
-
Strive to edit a page to incorporate suggestions as opposed
to using add comment
-
This is not "once-and-done," it will keep changing
specially during the workshop period; keep coming back
-
If you get stuck, say so in your text; ask for help in your
text and move on
-
Show respect, but keep making it better
-
Differing opinions? Document both sides and flag it to discuss
later with the whole team
-
Get creative and have fun making each other's ideas stronger
6. Tools and logistics
Based upon the nature of workshop you will have to decide using the most
readily available collaborative tools. Broadly you may have to utilize five
kinds of tools; voice, email, shared whiteboard, online spreadsheet,
text chat channel, for conducting a successful workshop based upon
their usage. All these tools could be used in combinations to perform three
core functions throughout the workshop. Let’s explore the three functions in
detail.
1. The conference room
This will act as act
as a platform to initiate the workshop ,become the central point
of contact between participants and you at the beginning or end of each
breakout session and also act
as a platform to present information, share applications, and collaborate on
with participants, around the globe. It will also act a fallback for the participants to
get back to you in case they could use some help.
Two of the most commonly used web conferencing service providers are Cisco WebEx and
AT&T
Connect. Both provide Web Conferencing and Collaboration Solutions
for small, medium and large enterprise. Both the service providers apply almost
similar operating model, i.e. both provide meeting names, international toll
free numbers to facilitate audio and passwords for coordinator as well as
participants coupled with web meeting applications that are web browser
agnostic. As a result the users enjoy having an unbeatable, interactive meeting
experience right on their desktop. They can even record sessions for later
review. Both of them provide confidentiality assurances so that you can conduct
even the most sensitive meetings with confidence—without compromising corporate
security or shared data. Both the service providers levy charge as per usage,
i.e., pre user per minute to help you keep your costs under control.
Here is a link to help you signup and create a pay
per use account with Cisco WebEx and to help you
calculate the estimated costs this is a link to Cisco WebEx pay per
user meeting cost estimator. If you want a commercial quote from WebEx
please visit Contact
sales.
Both AT & T Connect and WebEx Meeting center provide similar
features and look and feel when it comes to the online meeting environment.
But, before you start looking out for the above mentioned
web conferencing tools, explore the tools available inside organization that
you can exploit in combination to create an excellent web conferencing
platform.
2. The breakout zones:
Break out zones will be the secondary meeting rooms in your workshop,
which will accommodate participants for the entire duration they are working on
the assigned scenario. So, you will have to provide them with all the essential
tools that would facilitate brainstorming, scribbling, exchanging notes and at
times shouting back and forth. In addition to this you will have to keep the
Mother meeting room active so that the participants can get back to you or the
coordinator as and when required.
Typical infrastructure
requirements of a breakout zone are mentioned below:
Voice: you can use a combination of Web
conferencing and Audio conferencing facilities depending upon your financials.
Depending on how liberal you want to be, you can use WebEx or AT&T solutions
discussed in point number one. Or, you can choose to utilize the very reliable
audio conferencing facilities currently being used at your organization.
Email: for private messages you can
rely on your very own, and reliable corporate email infrastructure.
A Shared "Whiteboard" Document: This is
where you can easily get carried away with the number of choices that you have.
For instance if you are using Web conferencing solution, they usually come with
whiteboard inbuilt. Or, you can use the conference facility built into your
organizations instant messaging system, but this will hamper the one to one
chats going on between the participants.
The last but not the least choice
that you have is using Organization Wiki. A perfect tool to capture progress
throughout the workshop helps you keep track of the versions easily editable
and a perfect example of “what you see is what you get”.
An Online Spreadsheet, for making quick lists, you can
consider using Wiki for this. It will be real time and will be readily
available for participants for a quick reference check on what’s next or what’s
to be done by them.
A Text Chat Channel, both AT&T Connect and WebEx
meeting and provide an inbuilt any to any text messaging facility so if you are
going ahead with any of them as your breakout rooms this part is easily taken
care of. But if you decide otherwise you can utilize the one built into organizations' Instant messenger.
3. The progress tracking tool or work in progress
repository
Throughout the course of the workshop there will be a number of ideas
being thrown, documents created and some to do lists made. Most of them would
become the base of the work being done in the next sessions or may become a
workshop idea altogether. Usually these lists or documents vanish the moment
you call it a day. This calls for a strong online tool that can not only help
record these ideas or lists but also store documents created during the
workshop for future reference. In our case organization Wiki became that tool
for us. You can create team sites, create participant lists, and then assign
separate pages to participants give them authorizations to control the flow of
the workshop output. You can store documents, spreadsheets and even store media
files if required for future reference.
7. The moment of truth: Conducting the workshop
This is the time when you are going to get the taste of your
preparations. You will have participants logging in from all over the globe,
some familiar with the tools, some struggling to get onboard. This will be your
time to help the participants to not only understand the tools but also weed
out their apprehensions around the workability of the workshop.
7.1.
Familiarize the participants
After making sure that all participants are available and online spare
some time to for introductions. Make the participants introduce themselves
along with the line of business they come from, the area of expertise and to
some extent allow them to share some aspect of their personal life.
Reiterate the objective of the workshop and the expected outcome and the
make sure that you explain the importance of selecting virtual workshop over
onsite workshop as a next step. This will solve two purposes first it will
refresh participant’s memory on what’s expected of them, and will make the idea
of virtual workshop acceptable to few skeptics.
Next step, take some time to explain each and every available tool to
participants. Explain the most important tools in detail while touching upon
not so important features. Let the participants play around the tools for some
time so that they become comfortable with the available tools. Make sure that
you ask participants individually or collectively on their comfort using the
tools.
7.2. Assigning tasks
Divide the participants into predefined groups and assign one
participant the responsibility to lead a particular group. Each group is than
allocated a scenarios and tasks based upon their area of expertise or interest.
7.3.
Delegation
Divide the participants into predefined groups and assign one
participant the responsibility to lead a particular group. The leader will be
responsible for coordinating the entire breakout room, collect inputs and get
back to the mother workshop in case some help is required from the moderator or
facilitator. You can choose delegate based upon his experience, organizational
hierarchy or availability. Make sure that this is updated in the workshop
bulletin board prior to the start of the workshop.
7.4.
Keeping the focus
One major challenge you
night face during the workshop is maintaining the focus of participants on the
job they are assigned. It’s very easy to lose focus and get engaged into
something from regular work that requires immediate attention and response. So
it would be worthwhile to keep a watch on participants logging in or out of the
workshop.
7.5.
Maintaining the availability
Make sure that each of the participants is able to log into the required
meeting room and assist him in case he needs some help. Make sure that you have kept active and
standby channels and have communicated the same to participants just in case.
8. Document the outcome
Assign a resource to serve as scribe. He has to be the one normally
authorized to write into the workshop
main page. Ask the attendees to keep this page open, however, as it was
important that they be able to correct any errors (in spelling, emphasis, or
meaning) that scribe might make; this also serves as a good way for attendees
who might have stepped away for a moment to catch up. As the conversation
ensued, scribe records the main ideas, and as many of the useful phrases or
terms as he can -- this was not a transcript, but should certainly more than an
outline.
9. Share
This should not the same as people firing off emails to each
other, no matter how many people are CC'd. Inevitably, someone is left out of
the loop -- usually the facilitator, at least -- and since email tends to
arrive in clumps (as the server gets checked), it's much more likely that the
reader will end up missing out on some crucial aspect of the discussion while
reading a series of email messages.
Share your results and outcomes using “Corporate Wiki”. This will serve
two purposes; one it will become an online reference guide for anyone to come
and take a look thus improves visibility of the initiative. Two it would give
your participants a place to come and contribute hours may be days after the
workshop is over, thus keeping your workshop alive long after it’s over.
Virtual workshop: it’s more than a metaphor
Virtual workshop provides organizations with an extremely cost effective
way to improve operating results. They enable teams at different locations to
work together in real time, without expenses and extra days of travel. The technology
commonly available to most of the organizations –including high-speed internet
connectivity and basic computer laptop and audio conferencing facilities—is all
that is needed for team to participate in a virtual workshop. Some obvious and daunting questions immediately
arise. Can we link people across the globe? What about time
zones? What technology is required? The answer is; an interactive workshop on the Internet can be done
successfully. Even time zones are not an issue if you really
want to participate. Be warned, though, that communication is
different in that environment.
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