Month: February 2023

Lets Make Remote Meeting Effective and FUN!!

As Scrum Teams, we are used to collaborative, highly interactive meetings. How do we make sure we still enjoy our remote interactions and don’t end up with Zoom fatigue? This session will explore 14 Essential Steps for Making Remote Meetings More Engaging, Interactive & FUN!

Let’s explore what we can use to increase the energy, engagement and success of our virtual events, whether it’s Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospectives, Classes or any other Virtual Event! Imagine being able to say “That was a FUN event” – Join us and explore How we can do this!

How you begin a workshop can greatly impact desired outcomes.

A good facilitation plan–just like a good story–requires a strong beginning, middle, and end. That means that both writer and facilitator must hook their audiences right from the beginning or risk losing them before the beginning of Act 2. Check-ins and Designed Team Alliances (DTA) can hook participants early, set a positive tone for the entire workshop, and lead to successful workshop outcomes.

Many agilists know them to be useful; however, these impactful activities are often overlooked or ignored altogether. Outside of the agile world, they rarely happen at all. Using both or even just one of them, can build better relationships between participants and make the task at hand easier to accomplish resulting in better outcomes.

This presentation will look at how to skillfully use check-ins and DTAs to set you and your teams up for success from the very beginning.

Let’s deep dive into a specific workshop type that is needed in most projects – the idea generation workshop. In this kind of workshop we want the group to come up with ideas to address a particular topic and, crucially, to prioritise and select ideas to continue with. We’ll look at how to set up the context so people actually have ideas, how to build on an initial set of ideas, how to decide on selection criteria and then select from the ideas (spoiler – no dot-voting!). And we’ll discuss the human element – why it can be hard for people to feel comfortable in this kind of workshop and why it will often end up with mediocre ideas.

Facilitation requires a combination of creativity, intuition, and structure.

Yet, most of us who facilitate get away with a ‘winging-it’ approach to designing and delivering workshops. We have a toolkit of methods and exercises, picked up tricks of the trade through trial-and-error, and more than likely relied on our intuition, enthusiasm, or just being good with people.

However, this approach can lead to inconsistent results, feelings of overwhelm and frustration.

You agonise over what goes in and doesn’t go into a workshop. Work hard in sessions because people get lost as to what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. More than likely, you’ve felt rushed or flustered as you run out of time.

To avoid these pitfalls, you need a practical and repeatable process for crafting and facilitating purposeful workshops.

In this talk, Ped draws on his 20+ years of facilitation experience to share a process rooted in the art of storytelling and the science of learning design. He shows you to transform your ‘trial-and-error’ approach into a bulletproof, evidence-based facilitation structure that fully engages your attendees and guides them naturally to their a-ha moments.

Leave the talk with the know-how on facilitating high-value workshops.

Facilitating workshops can be a challenging task, but with the right tools and techniques, it can also be incredibly rewarding. Join Martijn van Kesteren, a seasoned workshop facilitator with over 20 years of experience, as he shares his insider tips and tricks on how to design the perfect workshop flow, whether it’s virtual or in-person.

Martijn will guide you through the key considerations in planning a successful workshop, including how to select the right tools, keep your team on track, and make the most of your valuable time together. He will also delve into the art and science of facilitation and explain why intuition and experience play a vital role. Get ready to be inspired and learn from a world-class facilitator as Martijn shares his knowledge and passion for the craft in this engaging and interactive talk. Whether you’re an experienced facilitator or just starting out, you’re sure to take away practical tips that will help you run more effective and impactful workshops.

Imagine for a moment what your business could look like if you and your team could get more done in less time, while feeling energized and inspired rather than stressed and exhausted. It’s not a fantasy; in fact, more companies than ever before are embracing the power of facilitation and the profound effect it can have not just on your bottom line, but also your team’s sense of happiness and fulfilment at work.

To help you get started, David will share his personal journey to become a master facilitator and workshop designer. While providing you with many of the most important insights he has gained along the way, before revealing the reasons he believes this way of working is so much more effective that what most companies do today.

You’ll leave with a greater understanding of the impact of running and facilitating workshops, and you’ll be equipped with techniques that you can use to kick off your own facilitation adventures.