With five breakout sessions and three co-presenters, my task was to facilitate and hold the space for the entire session. Not an easy task, but I think it worked sufficiently well. It turns out that facilitating online events isn’t that different to in-person events:

1. Meeting space

Participants are familiar with in-person meeting rooms. As a facilitator, you can benefit from this knowledge by using the room as a metaphor for the online meeting space. For example, I used the following phrases:

• “As I am looking around the room, I’m seeing people from Asia, Africa and Latin America”

• “To find your breakout session, you’ll need to take three steps: First, leave the plenary room. Then, orient yourself. Finally, enter the breakout room.” – (We had arranged breakout rooms as separate webinar sessions and had to teach people to switch session in the middle of the process.)

• “In this room, you can participate by typing comments directly in the chat box in the bottom left corner, by raising your hand using the button in the top left.”

In an in-person session I would normally capture contributions in writing on a flipchart – thus confirming that they have been heard and are taken on board. In online sessions, it’s the other way around: It’s important to read out relevant chat messages to confirm that they were seen. This also helps participants that aren’t giving the screen their full attention at that moment.

2. Design for engagement

Even though you can’t see your participants, they are still there – and they want to bring their ideas and expertise to the table. In the Leadership Lab, we invited everyone to arrive 15 minutes early to give them time to arrive, grab some tea, banter and say ‘hello’ – and of course sort out eventual technology issues. The design of the actual session was comparatively simple – but included ample opportunity for everybody to contribute to the conversation:

• Check-in: Three words about you (in the chat)

• Welcome, structure and purpose

• Introduction: Initial considerations on leadership approach
  with questions + discussion in the chat

• Breakout groups: Which leadership tools and approaches for which purpose?

• Brief reports + Check-out: What do you take away from today’s conversation? (in the chat)

3. People are responsible for their own experience

Technology can be an obstacle, and we always make sure to have one person at hand whose only task it is to help troubleshooting. However, not every problem can be solved in the short time available. Other participants might only participate with partial attention or have to leave before the end.

My focus as a facilitator will always be to provide a good flow of conversation for those engaged with the conversation. As I cannot see what is going on in front of the screens of the participants, I trust that they will find a way to communicate their needs.

Normal meeting rules still apply.

In summary, an online meeting is still a meeting. It needs the same amount of process design and attention to result in a meaningful conversation. Technology is an enabler of these conversations and should never stand in the way. Easier is often better, as it creates less confusion and is less likely to break.

Focus on the purpose of the conversation, and you’ll find a way to host it.
Purpose is the killer app.

What is your experience with online meetings?

The need for a new name was obvious. The organisation was tired of being referred to as ‘data protection activists from Bielefeld’, of having to clarify spelling or pronunciation at every occasion, and generally of the dreaded question: “What does the name stand for?”

The correct answer had been a joke already 25 years ago: Verein zur Förderung des öffentlichen bewegten und unbewegten Datenverkehrs, a riff on the absurd neologisms of the Deutsche Post at the time. As the internet grew in importance (and Deutsche Post lost its grip on it), this joke grew old.

How do you rename an organisation?

FoeBuD’s founders approached me with this question in May 2011. One of the main challenges: FoeBuD’s strength lies in its independent-minded volunteer network, some of whom actually quite liked the quirkiness of the old name. Any process would thus be doomed if it tried to impose a new name from above – and equally doomed if it tried to please everybody. Instead, we built on the creativity and enthusiasm of FoeBuD’s activists – while providing a clear decision-making process: After having considered hundreds of proposals, FoeBuD’s board put one name forward to the General Assembly. Without any counter-proposals, the name DigitalCourage was adopted unanimously on 27 October 2012.

Some of the highlights on the way:

• In November 2011, FoeBuD’s quarterly meeting of activists comes up with more than 200 suggestions for a new name.
• In February 2012, an extraordinary General Assembly approves the process for the name change and calls for a wider search.
• In April 2012, FoeBuD invites the public to contribute to the name search. 55 people write in with their ideas.
• After a series of meetings between May and August 2012, FoeBuD shares a short list with all members and asks for feedback. Based on the results, the board (and the informal meeting of activists) decides on the name to propose to the General Assembly.

Don’t try this at home.

A name change, more than any other rebranding, is not for the faint-hearted. A name reflects your identity. Any attempt to change it will surface your organization’s unspoken assumptions, hidden conflicts and unclear agreements. Some old members have left FoeBuD in the process, and I expect that there will be more taking a similar decision after the announcement.

A name change is far more than the creative name of brainstorming new options and selecting the best among them. We’ve done intensive work on everything from FoeBuD’s character, its target audiences, its vision, objectives and challenges. These parts of FoeBuD’s identity will not change, even as the name does. After 25 years of FoeBuD, the world still needs activists and artists with courage and passion for a digital world worth living in. The world needs DigitalCourage.

For me as a facilitator accompanying this process, I felt inspired seeing the ownership and excitement for the name change process grow over time. When L. took time to interview FoeBuD members about the how and why of the name change and to produce a video about it. When F. stood up to make a passionate case for one of the names and encouraged others to follow suit. When D. took stragglers and doubters to the side and persistently moved the process along. This was an exciting process, and it took a village.

To the next 25 years: DigitalCourage.

During the candidate briefing in the morning, the IAF stressed that they wanted us to enjoy the day, learn from each other and network. “Yeah, right”, I thought. I had other priorities in that moment. This was an exam, in the end, wasn’t it?

Later in the day, before the final round of interviews, one of my assessors walked into the room where the candidates hung out and remarked how happy we all looked. She was right: We were enjoying ourselves. Who else gets a chance to experience six workshops led by six different, highly skilled facilitators in a day? There was so much to learn from the variety of settings and approaches we saw.

Here are some of the things I might want to try as a result:

• Get them to stand up. The first break out groups of the day Kristel invited us to stand around a flip chart each. As a result, we gained focus, and we created a large visual that we could share with the whole group. Remember: Flip charts are not for facilitators only.
• Use a model in the room. We then played with polarities in a diverse group of stakeholders, and in an incredibly short period of time Paul got us to connect with our own position and see the value in the position of the others. Remember: Don’t just talk about differences, make them practical.
• Prepare templates. I enjoyed the structure, clarity and professional delivery in Evgeny’s facilitation. The printed, humorous instructions showed us that he had confidence in his approach and delivered it regularly. Remember: Distill your system and stop reinventing the wheel.
• Trust the process. Inviting the participants to co-create a visual always feels risky for me. Seeing it working so well in Marjeta’s workshop meant that I can give myself permission to try more of this, too. Remember: Stop talking, start drawing and writing together.
• Develop your style. It’s easy to fit in, use standard material, boring post-its and typeset instructions. Nick’s hand-written handouts, his use of silly shapes and metallic markers really supported to his purpose of bringing fun and creativity into the group. Remember: Break the rules if you want to create something new.

All of us passed the assessment yesterday, and I felt so honoured when my assessors gave me their thoughtful, appreciative and observant feedback at the end of the day. I am deeply grateful for the intense, enjoyable and cooperative atmosphere during the assessment.

The CPF assessment might not be easy, but it’s been an amazing process for me, learning from master facilitators and, maybe, possibly, slowly becoming one.

Believe me, I’ve been there. Writing is hard. It’s the process of condensing your thinking in a way that another person might understand it (and ideally, do something as a result). Writing makes good communication, and good communication makes leadership and change. Still, scatterbrains as we are, we resist.

Lower the danger level

The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is to give myself permission to lower the danger level. I no longer try to write something polished and perfect on the first go. If I would, I’d freeze up immediately. Instead, I try to explore the thing that wants to be expressed.

• Letters. Sometimes, I write a letter to a prospective reader: ‘here’s what I would love for you to understand…’. Sometimes, I write a letter to the project I’m working on: ‘this is why you are important and why I want to bring you into the world…’. Or I might write a letter to the version of me that knows how to write this text: ‘I’m feeling stuck, I’d like to do this, can you give me a pointer how to start…’.
• Time boxing. I might give myself 20 minutes in which I just write. It doesn’t matter what, as long as I don’t stop moving the pen. Of course, there’s usually plenty of ‘I don’t know what to write’ or ‘this is a stupid exercise’ in the resulting text, but also a surprising amount of useful marbles and insights.
• Start with what you know. When I think about a text, I sometimes start by listing the things I already know or resources that I want to use for the text. A mind map can be good; lists work well, too. A text does not have to answer all possible questions – if you start by working with the material you have, you’re off to a good start.
• Buddy up. Truly difficult texts need peer support. I might start by telling a friend or colleague the purpose and outline of my project and then commit to spending an hour working on it before I send her the result. Knowing someone is waiting for your first draft is such an important motivator to get it done.

Drafts are good

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor

– Anne Lamott
Once you have some material to work with, you can start mining it for the parts that you want to keep. Remember that you don’t have to do it all on your own – if you truly dread looking at your writing again, you can ask a friend or colleague to do it for you. Because you’re still working on the text (and probably more than aware of its shortcomings), ask her to highlight the good parts and ask questions that can help you get more specific.

Most of the time when we’re stuck on a text, we try to write and edit at the same time. When writing is hard, focus on finding your message first and don’t worry about getting it right just yet. Then take time to edit and revise to really get your message across.

When you write, you get a chance explore your thinking.
Enjoy it.

Some resources I like

• 750 words is the online version of Julia Cameron’s morning pages. Just write. Write or Die is slightly less friendly, but probably just as effective.
• I really enjoy Daphne Gray-Grant’s newsletter as a weekly reminder of good writing and editing habits.
• If you want to write about yourself (a bio, for example), try this exercise: 16 questions to help you write a douche-free bio (thanks, Kelly!)

Three Steps for Target Audience Engagement

When to use it: When you are trying to understand your target audiences and communications channels

The idea: Segment your audiences by proximity to your organization and design your communications channels based on this distinction

Sources: ON:SUBJECT’s mash-up of Chris Rose’s How to Win Campaigns and Mark Silver’s Three Journeys of Marketing

When you segment by proximity, try to identify (at least) the following three distinct categories:

1. The anonymous masses. These are people and organizations with whom you do not yet have any established relationship. For all you know, they might never have heard of you. Your first objective in communicating with this audience is to raise awareness. You’ll want to offer them some low-barrier ways to check you out: an event, for example, or an informative newsletter. The first step is to get them to engage with you – once.
2. The observers. These are people and organizations that have given you permission to engage with them. They are curious about you, but not yet completely on your side. Because they’ve participated in an event, given you money (once) or signed up to your newsletter, you know them by name (and email address). Your first objective with this audience is to create alignment. Give them plenty of high-quality information, and offer them interactive ways to get active. The second step is to deepen their engagement.
3. The fan club. These folks are completely on your side, and they actively engage with you. They could be (repeat) donors, volunteers, board members or staff. Do not take them for granted, and encourage them to spread the word. Your first objective with this audience is to repeat engagement. You’ll want to actively involve them in the direction your organization is taking and acknowledge their achievements. The third step is to make them your best ambassadors – for the long-term.

Now, if your organization communicates with different audience sectors (like donors, beneficiaries, activists), you can further segment the three categories above. I usually work with 3-4 of these sectors – more easily becomes overkill. You will usually find representatives of all sectors in each category. If you don’t, ask yourself why that is and whether you would like to change it. You could recruit beneficiaries to your board, for example.

Next, make a list of your existing communications channels and the category they speak to, for example:

My rule of thumb is to spend about a third of my communications resources on each category. To make best use of limited resources, it helps to be very clear what the next step is you want each target audience to take. You’ll also want to be clear whom you are asking to take this step (hint: it’s not the ‘general public’).

A nice side-effect of this approach to segmenting audiences is that it makes your communications impact very measurable: Because you are asking people to take an observable actions, you know how many people have ‘graduated’ to being observers or become part of your fan club.

See also: Cultivate your fan club

Over to you: how would this model apply to your organization? How else do you segment your audiences?

Creating spaces

Just as your event needs a physical space to come to life, your online equivalent needs a home, too. You could use the existing spaces of your community for this, the Facebook group, for example, or the official mailing list, but it might overwhelm those that are not involved in the event at hand – or might exclude newcomers from participating.

In most cases, it’s good to think about two kinds of spaces:

1. an ‘official’ webpage for the event that you use to collect all harvests and point to links elsewhere on the web. Example: iucnworldconservationcongress.org
2. a hashtag that allows participants to notify you (and others) that the content they have posted is related to the event. Example: #IUCN2012

Speaking an invitation

Once you have defined a room for online engagement around your event, don’t forget to invite people in. This could take the form of a dedicated email or news story, circulated to the relevant communities. Most importantly: encourage your participants to spread the word for you.

Hosting meaningful conversations

Be clear about the kind of engagement you would like to see. Is there a dedicated group of people maintaining the space? Are you just reporting, or are you interested in questions, comments and thoughts? How will you bring conversations happening online back into the live event?

At the Learning Village, we focused on gathering participant’s personal perspectives and pictures in a group blog. We used Posterous as it allows easy posting by email. To date, eleven participants have contributed 25 posts.

During the bi-annual AKtiVCongreZ, we use a public Etherpad to collaboratively write the minutes (and discuss them with non-participants) as the event unfolds.

Harvesting the harvest

Some events generate a storm of activity, with photos, Twitter updates, blog posts and random comments. To be of service for the community, put together a summary document or report (e.g. using Storify, a Google Doc or a simple blog post) including the most relevant results and their sources. This way, it’ll be easy for you (and others) to answer the question: What actually happened at this event?

This post is the result of a conversation at this month’s Online Communications Question Time. The next edition of this free conference call with ON:SUBJECT will take place on Wednesday, 10 October at 17:00 CET (what’s that in my timezone?). 

The Problem: You’ve built your website somewhere else, now you want it to show under your own domain.

Using the Domain Name Service – CNAME Redirects

If you built your website using one of the online content management systems (e.g. wordpress.com, tumblr.com, weebly.com, Google Sites), you can usually easily set up a custom domain name in two simple steps:

1. Register your domain name in the backend (see screenshot)
2. Set up a CNAME record on your own domain, pointing to the respective web server.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.:]+\.)*oldwebsite\.com\.?(:[0-9]*)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://www.preferredwebsite.net/$1 [R=301,L]

<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; url=http://www.example.com/" />

<frameset rows="100%">   <frame src="http://www.example.com/"> </frameset>