Virtual Facilitation

6Designing Virtual Meetings and Workshops with Engagement and Effect

As we said in the introduction to this part of the book, any good session needs to be well thought through and well planned, whether it's physical or virtual. In a virtual space, you have less flexibility during a session, which means it's even more important to have a plan. We believe that you need to invest time and energy in designing and preparing every session to make sure that it will achieve the desired outcomes, that everyone will be highly engaged, and that you will have had a big impact.

Many of us have attended too many sessions where we don't feel as though we can make a difference or contribute. This is what we want to change. We want to share our approach to designing sessions with impact. In an overall perspective the preparation process looks like this:

Our approach to designing sessions with impact

1. Go through the Design Star potentially with key stakeholders. It could be your project team, client or other important sponsors. Be especially aware that the purpose matches time, resources and desired effect.
2. Create an agenda for your session, to settle on the overall process.
3. Work through the playbook – a template describing the session with regards to time slots, use of platform and materials, and how each point on the agenda will be handled and by whom.
4. Design your materials, such as PowerPoint, platform(s) and microinteractions and communication to participants (e.g. invitation, preparation ...