Online Meet-Ups

Facilitated by Kerri Price – Founder, The Facilitators Network

For most of us, we’re well practiced at maintaining engagement throughout a regular workshop, but how do we maintain engagement when we are working with groups over extended periods of time. Perhaps it’s a multi-day training with long days back-to-back. Maybe it’s the same client you’re working with over several months. It could be just a reeeeeeally long day where the timing can’t be managed any other way.

In this session we’ll look at the fundamentals of group engagement and explore how those principles play out when working with groups over extended periods. As always, the wisdom will be in the room, so if you have ideas that work for you make sure you come prepared to share.

Facilitated by Carolyn Smith, Woven Collaboration

Imagine you are standing on a beach, with a large and vocal group of angry neighbours who are almost ready to fight?  Alongside them are agency staff, and you’ve been invited to try to resolve the issue. What would you do?

This is a true story. And Carolyn was the person asked to help!

Carolyn has had a long career working in communities and has been in quite a few of these situations. In this session, Carolyn will share a model that she uses to support groups from a place of polarisation and conflict, to finding shared solutions. This is a great chance to learn from someone who regularly works in the space.

Facilitated by Kerri Price – Founder, The Facilitators Network

As facilitators we can not make anyone feel anything, however we can create an environment where specific feelings have a good chance of showing up. Creating an environment where people feel safe is reasonable easy with a group of ‘positive strangers’ or a team that already feels safe together. However, if a team does not feel psychologically safe with each other before the workshop, what can we do in the workshop itself?

In this session we will explore questions like:

• What is psychological safety and how will we know if it exists within a group?
• What if we know the group lacks psychological safety before the workshop starts?
• Is it reasonable to expect a facilitator to create a ‘safe’ space for an ‘unsafe’ team, and if so, what does that look like?
• Are workshops the right vehicle for developing psychological safety within a team? If so, when and in what context? If not, what needs to happen first?

This session will be run as a series of small group discussions exploring deep questions in this context.

Facilitated by Kate Smith, KS Consulting

Kate is an experienced facilitator specialising in all things Strategy. In this meet-up, Kate will explore the difference between good strategy and bad strategy; why strategic planning is a misnomer; and offer some useful tools and frameworks for exploring strategy with your team or clients.

As always, this is a full participation session, so come prepared to share ideas, ask questions and get involved.

Facilitated by Darryn Gray, Darryn Gray Consulting

Are you wanting new ideas for how to make your virtual workshops a more interactive? Been looking for a new tool to add to your virtual facilitation kete?

Darryn has been trailing and using a new presentation tool called Butter Scenes.  It’s a tool that that combines presentation, interaction, and whiteboarding tools—all in an easy-to-use slide builder. Easy for participants, powerful for you as a facilitator, and it works seamlessly with Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and of course within the Butter Video conferencing tool.

This session will be a behind the scenes tour of how it works, how easy it is to use and how quick it is to set up activities. If you want to check our Butter Scenes beforehand you can take a peek at https://www.butter.us/scenes.

Facilitated by Leeann Bassett, Face Up Now Social Media

Linked In is a great tool for making yourself known, building relationships and establishing yourself as an expert in your field. Leeann has run meet-ups for us before, but this time she is doing things a little differently. This meet-up will be run as a Q&A session, so you can bring the specific questions you want answered. This meet-up will be particularly useful for independent facilitators, but everyone is welcome.

Facilitated by Shaheen Hajira

As facilitators we want to make sure the spaces we create are inclusive and welcoming for all. However, that sometimes feels either too hard or that there are conflicting needs within the group.
In this session, we will explore how inclusive design practices can help us create spaces and environments that ensure all of our diverse participants feel included.

Key areas we will focus on:

• Creating accessible and engaging spaces for all
• Fostering inclusive communication and participation
• Supporting emotional safety

This is a highly interactive session where we focus on social learning and gain from the wisdom of the crowd.

Facilitated by Hannah Hardy-Jones

AI is here to stay and while it’s unlikely to replace the role of a facilitator any time soon, it can definitely add value to meetings, workshops and community conversations. In this session, Hannah will give an overview of what AI actually is, what you need to consider when using AI, and how you might use it in your facilitation practice. She will also introduce you to Contended AI, a New Zealand born platform that transcribes conversations to create meaningful insights.

Facilitated by Kerri Price

This meet-up is a chance to get to know other network members, while at the same time exploring a range of introduction and connection activities you can use in your own workshop sessions. For those who have been in the network for a while, we will be exploring some new activities that have not been introduced in a network meet-up before.