173. Don’t stand so close to me (Condition #22: virtual meetings)

While the whole world was virtual, I worked *really* hard on trying to figure out how to do facilitation, teaching and speaking on Zoom or whatever in ways that are engaging, interesting, useful, and that ultimately lead to meaningful learning and even behaviour change. I’m not saying I nailed it, but I feel pretty good now when I’m asked to conduct a virtual session of some kind, whether it’s for an audience of five or five hundred. In other words, I’m now convinced it’s possible to do good stuff in a virtual setting if you put enough work in on the conditions that you can control. Not to mention, the barriers to showing up to something online are *way* lower – no travel, few physical obstacles, less time commitment, you don’t have to put on all your clothes. Plus you can have lots of people in the same virtual space even if they are physically dispersed, meaning it’s easier in some ways to have diverse groups in a virtual setting than a physical one. All that said, this is not the way that people are used to interacting with each other, especially in groups. It takes a lot of intentional pre-planning to craft each part of a meeting or session so that it has the elements required to get the results you want. It is much more difficult to change conditions on the fly in a virtual setting, in part because everyone has their own set of physical conditions in their home or office, and also because virtual platforms only have so many tools to be spontaneous and creative. In other words, in my experience, the pre-work of a virtual meeting matters a bit more because you’re mostly stuck with it, so be thoughtful and intentional, and be sure to get and give lots of feedback.