Lucid Meetings uses GroupMap to deliver best online collaboration

Lucid meetings online meetings

Successful meetings everyday!

Lucid Meetings

Lucid Meetings is an innovation meeting company, focussed on helping teams run successful meetings everyday. 

The Lucid Meetings team focuses on the underlying systems that make successful meetings a regular part of your organization’s culture – being agenda management reliable records. 

The organization’s educational programs also helps teams design and lead successful everyday business meetings. 

Elise Keith is the founder and CEO of Lucid Meetings and has been using GroupMap to enhance collaboration in public educational events and private training programs. 

“Lucid Meetings helps thousands of teams worldwide run successful meetings every day,” explained Elise.

“In 2020, Lucid Meetings was recognized as one of the top-10 global influencer brands on the topic of remote work and virtual meetings.” 

The search for an online collaboration tool

Elise had wanted to find an online collaboration tool to support brainstorming, sensemaking, and decision making activities for large groups. 

“The free tools I’ve used–like Google Slides or Jamboard-lack the features and power needed to make it easy for large groups to get right to work, through no fault in design because that’s not what they were built for,” commented Elise. 

“Many other visual collaboration and decision support tools require lots of setup, time during the workshop for training participants, or they don’t produce usable results you can work with later.” 

Hitting the sweet spot with a group collaboration tool 

GroupMap online collaboration tool

Elise found GroupMap when first researching online brainstorming and decision support software to integrate with Lucid Meetings platform in 2015. 

Her thorough research is well documented and initially looked at 25 tools for online brainstorming and decision making and has now been updated to 35 tools. 

“Five years later and after comparison to many, many others, GroupMap remains my favorite for most educational workshops,” said Elise. 

“In my opinion, GroupMap hits the sweet spot. Participants find it easy to use with minimal instructions, it supports the multi-step processes I need to run, and it gives me useful data afterward.” 

Using GroupMap for collaborative brainstorming courses 

Elise and the team at Lucid Meetings recently conducted a public, online event, exploring “Meeting Technology.” The event included a deep dive with Scott Wharton, the VP and General Manager of Logitech Video Collaboration. 

In this event, participants used the brainstorming functionality of GroupMap, a variation on polarities and a variation on nine windows. 

Online collaboration occurred in a GroupMap workspace that Elise had set up (see below) with three brainstorming sessions. 

Lucid Meetings GroupMap

A customisable template was used to create the three brainstorming sessions for this Lucid Meetings event – starting with a polarities exercise below. 

GroupMap online Collaboration Tool at play

This was then followed by a four and nine windows template where participants can type in their ideas, comment on others’ thoughts and also vote using the thumbs up functionality. 

Online collaboration tool with GroupMapGroupMap with Lucid Meetings

A solution for meeting facilitators 

Elise noted that the recent online event on “Meeting Technology” using GroupMap as an online tool brainstorming was well received. 

“After the event, several facilitators said they’d check it out, because it was slick.”

Elise also commented that GroupMap supported the focus on Lucid Meetings events, which are on the ideas and content, not the technology itself, 

“Most of my participants didn’t say anything about GroupMap at the event, which is actually perfect. When we use other tools, we often get many comments about either challenges they’re having, or remarks about how much work it looks like we did to set it all up.” 

“For public events, I don’t want my participants thinking and commenting about all the prep work I did, so I’m really grateful when the tech can disappear so they can do the work. I feel GroupMap achieves that.”

“In my private programs, we run a series of mini-workshops over the course of several months. GroupMap makes it easy for me to take content from an earlier session and build on it later. Brainstorms from one session turn into the content we sort and analyze in later sessions.”

“This makes it easy for everyone to see both how their ideas are evolving, but also to pick right back up from where we left off.”

As a meeting facilitator herself, Elise indicated that using GroupMap gives her access to easily harvestable and analyzable data. 

“I can also publish pretty maps, which enhance the post-event value.” 

Reporting with GroupMap

Want to try GroupMap as an online collaboration tool? 

Schedule a demo with a GroupMap team member at a day and time that suits you best or have a go of our easy to use, supported online collaboration tool for FREE for 14 days today. 

IAF Facilitator shares workshop and online facilitation techniques for effective brainstorming

One of the major goals of any workshop is effective brainstorming and the equal and free sharing of ideas. With Government Forums and workshops, transparency and being time efficient is also key. In this case study, we look at the facilitation techniques used by IAF Facilitator and Author Paul Nunesdea at a well reputed Government Health Forum.

Event Background 

Since 2008, the  Annual National Forum on Alcohol and Health (locally abbreviated as FNAS) sees members of both the government and non-government sectors workshop issues on alcohol and its impact on public health.

This forum is organized by the General Directorate for Intervention on Addictive Behaviors and Dependencies. (Serviço de Intervenção nos Comportamentos Aditivos e nas Dependências or SICAD). 

(Photo source: https://www.architectingcollaboration.com/the-world-has-changed

 

In May 2019, SICAD invited Paulo Nunes de Abreu (aka Paul Nunesdea) to facilitate the forum’s opening session. We learned how he uses his facilitation leadership style, along with various GroupMap templates to achieve his workshop outcomes.

 

Facilitator Background

Paul is a certified IAF practitioner at Col-Lab, Author of the book series “Architecting Collaboration”, PhD and proud father, manager and organizational psychologist. He obtained his PhD in Group Decision Making from the University of Lancaster. Paul started Col-Lab, the Iberian Summits of Healthcare Leaders in Spain and the Hospital of the Future Forum in Portugal. 

He espouses the power and value of collaboration and teamwork. He devotes his research time into the principles, methods, and techniques that foster them. From the concepts of the facilitative leader to capitalizing on the efficacy of digital facilitation, Paul aims to develop the ideal fit between people and process to create change-making outcomes. 

As Paul explains, “As an IAF (TM) Certified Professional Facilitator, I am aware that every meeting we design is a touchpoint for anyone to experience an engaging moment in their lives with a tangible purpose that you can measure.”

He specializes in digital tools for visual collaboration and group decision-making. Paul has designed interventions to optimize change and innovation in healthcare and education within regional and national governments. Since pioneering GroupVision in the 90’s, he has recently founded Col-Lab (Collaboration Laboratory), where he continues to work with managers, teachers, trainers and facilitators to achieve extraordinary results.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Workshop objectives and goals

Paul was approached to do a keynote speech to motivate participants to engage in the overall theme. 

A secondary objective was to help the various FNAS members engage with other participants in their own intervention programs.

“The Deputy Director of SICAD asked us to select a topic,” Paul explains. “ After an intensive brainstorming session using GroupMap, the theme that was chosen by the facilitation team was: ‘How can we make the commercial communication of alcoholic drinks evolve in the sphere of sport?’”

The challenge, as Paul elaborates “  was to have the members of the FNAS, (who) normally work independently, to start work collaboratively among each other. That is to say, to increase the level of collaboration among members; to jointly accomplish their commitments and where their sense of identity of being a member of the FNAS is reinforced.”

 

The Facilitation Process Used

Simplicity was key, as Paul states “We started with the concept that less is more”

“Using blank templates,  we created five maps, one for each session in the Agenda. The first map was used in the opening session, meaning that the delegates had access to all subsequent maps throughout the day”   

Paul continues, “In the opening session, we have followed the 1-2-4-all group dynamic to collect participant’s inputs about the question. These were grouped in 5 categories and then subject to vote for selecting the most important ones.” 

“The ideas were categorized according to the different focal points of the forum: awareness and education, legislation, inspection, decoupling of alcohol from sport, and the evolution of ideas.

Gathering all the ideas and sub-topics would have been cumbersome and time-consuming. But according to Paul, the participants were able to discuss and collect all the ideas in just under 60 minutes. “

“(GroupMap) was a critical element. Not just during the session, but also afterward to produce the detailed session reports at the push of a button.” Paul describes, “We managed to collect ideas from a large group of more than 50 participants that would otherwise be cumbersome and totally impractical in a 60-minute session.”

 

(Photo source: https://www.facebook.com/pg/facilitargrupos/posts/

 

Workshop outputs and participant feedback

Paul shares the overwhelmingly positive reaction that he got from the participants after the session. “(They had a) huge smile on their faces saying, ‘I really enjoy this session’, or ‘I have never been in a meeting like this before’, ‘thank you’,” exclaims Paul. “It is a blessing to receive such comments as it makes us feel that our work as group facilitators is really impactful and makes a contribution to change people’s attitudes and outlook.“

 

(Photo source: http://www.sicad.pt/pt/Paginas/detalhe.aspx?itemId=283&lista=SICAD_NOVIDADES&bkUrl=BK/

Paul uses digital facilitation tool to augment his practice and techniques to bring out the best of both the analog and digital world of workshop facilitation. As Paul states, “I never cease to be surprised by the ease of use of this platform. I believe it helps me to bring tangible value to the customers who hire me.”

 

Further workshop tips and advice

We were curious to understand what tips and learnings Paul had from running the event. One of these was around reflection and closure when it came to digesting the information produced.

“In the debriefing session afterward, the facilitation team realized that we could have used GroupMap to collectively display results to the group and provide a better sense of closure.  A simple way would be to invite the group to read out contributions made. They can then discuss how they felt their voice and comments are reflected in the results to ensure buy-in.”

Paul recommends facilitators familiarize themselves with GroupMap. He believes it is a valuable tool that can help in the flow and success of facilitation activities. As he states” Take the Swiss Army knife approach in choosing the right template to use. It’s like your Swiss Army knife when you go out into the woods. Same with GroupMap templates. Try out different templates to find out what works best for your facilitation activities.”

Thanks to Col-Lab, you can contact them to discover or find out more about the different templates they used for the workshops. You can inquire here

Going beyond the face to face workshop

Another aspect that Paul finds useful with GroupMap is its remote accessibility. He recalls us about another experience where he had to conduct a workshop from a remote location. He was in Lisbon while the group was in Celfocus HQ in Oporto. 

“I remember back in the 90s. I worked with LAN-based group decision support systems. It was so cumbersome to install the system and then have to train participants to use it.  With GroupMap, it’s simple and there’s nothing to install. The facilitator can be remote,” he exclaims.

Paul was an expert speaker at the Remote Future Summit, the biggest virtual conference centered around the future of the remote workforce.

He ran an online workshop titled “What’s Facilitative Leadership and How Remote Work Immensely Benefits for it.” The session was centered around the concepts of the facilitative leader and how it requires a change to promote teamwork and group decision making.

Source: https://www.architectingcollaboration.com/on-being-a-facilitator-vs-being-a-facilitative-leader

The online participants completed a Survival On The Moon activity.” Paul explains,” A moon landing chart with 15 items is given to participants to rank in order of what they think is most important. They do this individually first. GroupMap instantly shows the overall group perspective. They  can then debate and discuss to decide on an overall group ranking.” 

“The challenge is not only to stay alive but to listen to every member of the team! Each person talks about their own view and the overall team view. This fosters communication and decision-making skills.” concludes Paul. “We could then debrief the results in real-time to illustrate the outcomes.”

Looking for an event or digital workshop facilitator?

Looking for a better way to facilitate workshops and meetings? Paul can be contacted via Col-Lab website or by e-mail to answer any questions or to elaborate on how he facilitates workshop outcomes.