Meeting Facilitation for Remote Workers
May 13, 2019
I learned a lot for example from this blog on remote culture, and it would be great to see more people speaking the same language around remote needs & processes we can use to make it easier, as well as have some dedicated time to talk about things we can improve on.
Also, that article talks about a technique I used recently during the Glitch onsite: when acting as a gatekeeper, I asked people who wanted to speak to get my attention with a gesture or eye contact, and I added their name to a list. People got a chance to speak in order (or sometimes, bumped up in order if they hadn't spoken at all yet and people had quite a bit were ahead of them) and didn't have to attempt to time interruptions perfectly to get a chance to speak. Chelsea Troy calls this a technique used by moderators; various activist groups call it the 'progressive stack' method of facilitation.
It worked really well; I'm thinking of making a Glitch app to let people add their own names and automate "name who hasn't spoken yet gets bumped up in priority", though it will still require a gatekeeper to click "next speaker" after someone's done speaking.