a couple thoughts on doing hybrid retreats
20 Jan 2024covid has continued to become more and more like the flu in the way that we deal with it. but it’s not all the way there yet and so some people are still quite hesitant to doing in-person gatherings and events. additionally, since the pandemic started and has waned, people are just way more open and even demanding of events being hybrid more often. there are probably other factors to the increasing frequency of hybrid convenings, but at least in the work arena that i can see, hybrid gatherings seem here to stay (at least for a while).
this means i have to do something i don’t really enjoy that much: designing hybrid retreats and convenings.
i don’t like designing hybrid gatherings because, often, it’s designing two different gatherings. you have to design an in-person flow and an online flow because, in my experience, it’s never that satisfying to design one and then think about how to weave in the other participants. it’s best thought of as two different design processes.
and the constraints on each can be quite different: how long people are willing and able to stay present, how many things (and what nature of things) are distracting people, how you the collective energy of the group, etc.
anyway, there’s more i could say about what makes hybrid design tricky but i came here to write up a couple things i have learned to love doing when i have to do hybrid design
the buddy system
whenever possible, give each remote participant a buddy in the room. i used to establish a tech lead and direct the online folks to reach out to the tech lead if they were having issues with audio, video, feeling engaged in the convo, etc. but i saw that then the tech leads were getting overwhelmed! i started trying this buddy pairing situation and it was much better and for a couple different reasons:
- it spreads the load of fixing tech issues. sometimes an in-person buddy knows how to deal with the issue quickly on their own. other times they don’t but they can bring it to group and get a collective solution. that’s two different ways of spreading the issue of making sure the online crew is able to participate at their highest level.
- it supports an equitable balance of energy of the collective. what i used to do most often was have one laptop, positioned where the view included as much of the group as posssible, and one mic and speaker, positioned to be in the best sound position in the room. this means everyone remote can only been seen in one place, heard from one place, and listen from one place.
when i pair folks up, meaning the in-room buddy calls the remote person by phone or video call, a few things happen: it increase the ability of people to hear (and sometimes see) from different vantage points; it brings more people in the room into the awareness that there are people online; and it allows people to have quick side conversations that can be supportive to resolving process or content questions without disrupting the whole group (this latter point is a double-edged sword, to be sure, but it can often be useful).
plan breakouts accordingly and with increasing complexity
in the arc of a day, i have learned to be intentional about when breakouts happen and how they happen. and as a day goes on, as people get more and more comfortable in the hybrid environment, i can design breakouts of increasingly complexity.
the most basic arc looks like this:
- first hybrid breakout: pairs. some pairs are fully in-person. some pairs are phone calls between in-person and remote folks.
- second breakouts: distinct online and in-person groups. some groups are all in-person, other groups are all online.
- third breakouts: blended groups. i usually design breakouts with 3-5 people so it works to have 1 (and sometimes 2) phoned-in participants
- fourth breakouts: blended groups with video. just like the previous breakouts but with video calls.
i know you might be thinking: wow, 4 breakout opportunities in a single gathering? and yes, sometimes i design that way! but i do think i design more breakouts in hybrid situations because it’s just more engaging for the online folks. plus the online folks can share thoughts in the breakout that then their in-person group mates feel accountable to bring into the physical room.
know when to do online breakouts and when to do blended groups
early in my hybrid design days, i found myself shying away from doing fun, creative, visual things in the room because it was hard to get the online folks to participate in the way the in-person folks could. nowadays, i keep most if not all of the complexity of the in-person phyiscal design elements (chart paper, post-its, etc) and just practice intentionality with how the breakout groups are divided. sometimes it’s super frustrating to be unable to see post-its on a wall during an in-person wall charting activity. so those situations, i would design separate online and in-person groups and make sure the virtual folks have their own online chart and post-it board. but sometimes, especially when the conversation is just talking, having blended groups feels great.
writing this is making think about all sorts of other design ideas for doing hybrid design but, like i mentioned, i don’t actually like doing it. so let me not start deep diving into possibilities and end this post here.
if you try anything out here, i’d be curious to hear how they work out for ya. let me know!
words / writing / post-processing
956w / 30min / 2min