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Showing posts with label dgroups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dgroups. Show all posts

Thursday, April 02, 2015

Five things I learned about running online webinars

Online webinars have become a popular form of online product, especially for trainings and learning events. However, have you ever participated in one of these online sessions, where you just sit in front of your screen, a presenter goes through the slides, but you have no idea about who else is attending the session and what questions have been typed in the chat? I personally feel very lonely being in these types of webinars!

Knowing how I did not want to organize a webinar, last week I co-facilitated an online webinar about “Using Dgroups in all its features” (see presentation below). This was the first of a pilot series of three webinars co-organized with Dgroups and ECDPM to support Dgroups users in learning the ins and out of the Dgroups platform, the basics of online community building and tips and tricks that are at the heart of online facilitation.


I have to admit I’m very lucky to be working with with good friends and colleagues Lucie Lamoureux and Ivan Kulis in the design and delivery of the overall Dgroups webinar series. I guess that knowing each other from the KM4Dev community - and sharing similar ideas in terms of effective knowledge sharing and facilitation - definitely helps to plan and run these online sessions.

But as this was not the first webinar I’ve designed and facilitated in the recent months, I thought to share a list of five things I’ve learned about how best to conduct effective and engaging online webinars.

1. Plan in detail

Even more than in the facilitation of face-to-face events, to run online webinars I think preparation is key. You don’t want to lose time fiddling with technology, or not knowing what should happen when. For me, this means:

  1. Developing a session design and storyboard document
    Before the session, we used Google Docs for the session design and storyboard, so we had all our links and references at hand and had a clear plan of what should happen, when. It’s so easy to run longer in a presentation, or to allow too long for Q&A and finding yourself having to catch up. The storyboard was our reference document to check where to speed up and where to pause, where to allow for more interaction and questions and where to refer users to post-webinar interactions.
  2. Timing your presentations - and adding presenters notes
    I had to practice a couple of times and time myself to make sure I could fit my slides in the slot allocated for each part of the presentation. I also used the presenter’s notes to write down my script, to avoid losing my train of thought while presenting but also as a contingency measure: had my connection failed, one of the other co-facilitators could have continued delivering the presentation, by reading through the script on each slide.
  3. Preparing your room layouts and materials
    We used Adobe Connect as our webinar platform. One of the (many) great features in Adobe Connect is that you can create different layouts for the different part of your sessions. So we had separate layouts for the presentation and discussion parts, for example with a larger chat window in the latter. All materials were already loaded in the room before the sessions, and ready to be displayed for each presentation session.

2. Build interaction into the session design

The session was designed to last for 90 minutes - and it was content heavy, I was aware of it. So we designed the webinar to alternate presentations (for max 15 minutes) and discussions (for 10 to 12 minutes) sessions. But we also asked participants to use the chat and write down their questions as they emerged during the presentation. By using an open chat window, participants become presenters themselves as they integrated the contents of the slides also with comments and additional tips or suggestions. Besides leveraging the possibility of peer learning, this is also a great way to keep participants attention and engagement.

3. You need a facilitation team

You cannot run an interactive webinar on your own. In our case, I was the main host and presenter, while Lucie was managing the chat and the Q&A sessions and Ivan was the technical host helping participants that had experienced problems with audio for example (very few in reality). I believe this is the minimum you can think of in terms of roles and task division. Sure, for the next webinars we need to improve our teamwork, for example in terms of making smoother transitions between one member and the others, or from one part of the webinar to the next, but that comes with practice and better use of the back channels.

4. Not all back channels are equal…

They are definitely not! In Adobe Connect, you have a presenter area on the screen which is visible only to meeting hosts and presenters. So as back channel we used a note pod (as the various content areas are called in Adobe) placed in the presenter area. However, this was a bit fiddly - we ended up writing over each other or having to wait for one to stop writing before the other could. Even more problematic was the moment that Lucie lost the connection to the meeting room. We had not planned to have also a Skype chat open as back-back channel in case something went wrong with Adobe. So thinking about all possible options will help us identify better solutions next time.

5. Some participants will not come…

We had a limit of 25 seats in the Adobe Connect room so we kept participants’ registrations to that limit and had a few interested Dgroups users in the waiting list. But as always happens with a free online webinar, some people just didn’t show up, and it was difficult to bring in people on the waiting list after the session had started. So what we’ll do next time is probably not to set any seats limit for the registration, so anyone can register, while only the first 25 registered participants that will actually join the room will have the possibility to attend. This will prevent ending up with ‘empty’ seats in the room - and hopefully will also be an incentive for participants to connect few minutes before the start of the webinar, so it can actually start on time!

What are your top tips to organize effective and participatory online webinars? Let me know in the comments!

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Announcement - Dgroups online peer exchange, 15 July 2013

As part of the communication and management support services we are proving to the Dgroups Foundation, we are organizing a new online peer exchange session on 15 July, 2013, from 1600 to 1730 CEST.

The Peer Exchange series started last November, in the context of the 2012 Dgroups Annual General Meeting, with the aim to strengthen peer-to-peer learning amongst Dgroups Partners, moderators, and users - and in general development professional working with online groups and communities. You can see the presentation shared in the previous two sessions, as well as video recordings of the meetings, on the website of the Foundation.

The upcoming event will discuss the use of "Email discussion forums for health and development professionals."

You can read more about the event, and find the registration link to participate in the peer exchange, on this post on the Dgroups Foundation website.

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Posted by Pier Andrea Pirani at 9:05 am

Monday, November 05, 2012

Dgroups 2012 Annual Meeting and online peer exchange


As part of the management support services we are proving to the Dgroups Foundation, we're working with the its Board to organize the 2012 Annual Meeting .

After having met in Rome last year during the ShareFair , this year Annual Meeting will be held online on 15 November from 14:00 GMT and it will consist of two parts:

  1. The Dgroups Partners Business Meeting - open to Dgroups members
  2. An open peer exchange session on “How to make most effective use of Dgroups” - this session is open to all interested participants. It will be the occasion to hear from two different Dgroups Partners, FARA and RWSN, which will share their experience and lessons learned in using Dgroups for their work.
If you are interested in joining the public peer exchange session, few seats are still available from the event registration page on Eventbrite.

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Posted by Pier Andrea Pirani at 10:58 am

Thursday, September 22, 2011

AgriKnowledge Share Fair 2011

The second AgriKnowledge Share Fair is about to kick off next week, hosted by IFAD in Rome (from 26 to 29 September).
It's going to be packed: "this four-day event will provide a forum to learn and share knowledge, experience and innovations on emerging trends relating to agriculture, food security, price volatility, climate change, changing demographics and other rural development related issues".
Having participated in two previous Share Fairs, in Rome in 2009 and Addis Ababa last year, I know this is going to be a very exciting gathering, with 160 presenters from across the planet, discussing their experiences and innovative ways to share knowledge in the agricultural and rural development sector - see the final agenda here.


We'll be in Rome for the whole week and we have a very exciting agenda ahead. More importantly, we look forward to meeting old and new friends.
To start with, on Day 0, Monday 26 September, we'll be facilitating several modules on knowledge sharing tools and methods:
  • Collaborative writing (1100-12:30, room B400)
  • Microblogging (14:00-1530, room C400)
  • Video production, storing and sharing (14:00-1530, room C200)
  • Open space (16:00-1730, room C500)
  • Dgroups (14:00 to 15:30, room B500)

From Tuesday to Thursday, we will provide support and facilitation to the following sessions:
  • On 27 September, Dgroups annual members meeting (14:00 room B100);
  • On 28 September, Sensemaking: The cognitive map of farms - Experiences of sharing agricultural knowledge in Southern Africa (171) (11:00, room C400);
  • On 29 Septembers, Helping farmers identify fake or genuine agro-inputs using SMS (138) (14:00 room C300)

We'll be also collaborating with the #sfrome social reporting team. We will focus on sourcing and aggregating the content that is produced during the event, so we can deliver it to users into a consolidated information product. Here's the link to the aggregated Share Fair newsfeed and email alerts. You can also take a look at the Netvibes dashboard we've been playing with: it still needs some work but we think it can be useful to keep track of the different "#sfrome" conversations in one single window - feedback and comments are most welcomed!

Finally, the week climaxes - for us at least - with the KM4DEV members meeting!

Follow the event remotely, comment on media and share your reactions with us.

Share Fair news and updates <p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/sharefair"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p>

Friday, April 17, 2009

Dgroups Partnership meets in The Hague

On April 15 and 16, representatives of 13 members of the Dgroups Partnership met in The Hague. Margarita Salas from Sula Batsu in Costa Rica joined most of the meeting remotely, in spite of the huge time difference, and participated virtually in the discussion. Damir Simunic from WA research, technical host of the platform, also participated in the majority of the sessions.

The agenda of the meeting was quite dense, with a lot to be discussed both on the technical side, as well as on the partnership side. Among other things, the following items were on the table:
  1. review the new platform, its usability, hosting, and support provisions;
  2. agree priorities for further platform development and enhancements;
  3. elect board members to the Foundation, discharging the current executive committee;
  4. agree management, coordination, financing arrangements for the coming years.
This meeting was the first opportunity for Dgroups members to meet face to face to review all the actions and changes since their last meeting (January 2007).

In spite of the short time available, all the items on the table were addressed and clear decisions for future actions taken. A new board was elected; the usability of the platform was discussed at length; support mechanisms have been put into place; and agreement on the main governance elements of the partnership were taken.

Christian Kreutz argues that the Dgroups commmunity is as important as the platform:




Sarah Kerr, ex-Bellanet and long term Dgroups supporter reflects on recent developments:




Euforic participated in the meeting as coordinator and sub-contractor to Dgroups. In this role, we've been nurturing the partnership and catalyzing the various steps along the way.

A report of the meeting will soon be available. More information on the meeting can be found on the Dgroups blog; see more video interviews on Dgroups.

Subscribe to Dgroups newsfeed.
Posted by Pier Andrea Pirani at 5:49 pm

Monday, December 29, 2008

Dgroups – migrating to a new platform in 2008

During 2008, Euforic continued to provide overall coordination support to Dgroups - a leading discussion and community platform for many development actors (see 2007 report).

The main focus of 2008 was the platform itself and its migration to a new system and host. Early in the year, it departed IDRC for IGLOO – who hosted the ‘D1’ platform throughout the year. In mid 2008, the Dgroups Executive Committee selected WA Research to build the new ‘D2’ platform. It also recruited a small migration team to assist in the transition, due to be complete in February 2009.

The task was to build a new platform and migrate more than 2500 groups, some 110,000 individual users, and more than 40,000 shared resources (and in the process identify which groups were active, which could be archived, and which deleted).

By the end of 2008, the beta D2 platform was ready and many groups were already migrated in a test phase. The new platform immediately won over users with its fast and reliable email functionalities, a welcome improvement from an increasingly shaky D1 platform (which was already past its best).

The Dgroups blog has reports and milestones on the migration and build processes.

Alongside the platform migration, the Executive Committee worked to establish a Dgroups Foundation that could take on the independent ownership of the platform – and be the focus for the Dgroups partnership.

Euforic acted as coordinator and sub-contractor to Dgroups, nurturing the partnership and catalyzing the various steps along the way.

We look forward to having a more reliable platform, with added possibilities to mash Dgroups into other communication tools used by Euforic and its members.

by Peter Ballantyne
Posted by euforic at 11:40 am

Monday, December 17, 2007

Dgroups developments in 2007

Since 2006, Euforic has played an overall coordination role with Dgroups - the primary email exchange platform for communities in development.

Early in 2007, Dgroups members and partners met in The Hague to review progress and formulate plans for 2007 and beyond. An important milestone was the decision to elect an 'executive committee' to guide the partnership forward. The group also discussed governance and management mechanisms. membership issues, and the planned transition of the platform and its hosting outside IDRC.

Behind the scenes, most of the rest of the year was spent preparing the transition away from IDRC, and looking into future technical directions. Up front, new member organizations joined, plans were made for two dgroups workshops to be held in 2008 in Latin America, some 20,000 people signed up for the platform and some 350 new groups were created.

For 2008, the priorities are: to ensure the smooth transition of the Dgroups server hosting from IDRC to IGLOO; to establish an independent legal entity for Dgroups; to transfer administration of the partnership from IDRC to ICCO; and finally, most important perhaps, to build a new 'open' platform based around core email and file sharing applications that can exchange with other existing applications.

By the end of 2007, the Dgroups membership comprised the following organisations: Alfa Redi, CTA, CGIAR, CIDA, CIDSE, COHRED, Child Helpline International, Context, DFID, EADI, ECDPM, FAO, Helvetas, Hivos, ICCO, IDRC, IICD, INASP, KIT, OneWorld, SDC, SNV, Sula Batsu, UNAIDS SEAPICT, UNDP, UNECA, and the World Bank.

by Peter Ballantyne
Posted by Peter Ballantyne at 2:32 pm

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Michael Roberts on Dgroups

After presenting Dgroups in one of the parallel sessions at the Web2forDev conference, we caught up with Michael:



For Micheal, the real strength of Dgroups lies in its being a partnership among different organisations that, instead of duplicating efforts, work together, sharing time and resources, to create a common platform to address a common need in the development community.

Further, looking at the 'new' web revolution, the Dgroups partnership is now committed to innovate along the lines of the new social web; in particular, the possibility to integrate the existing platform with different tools, such as wikis and blogs, opens up great opportunities for Dgroups to offer an enriched service to its users.

Read related stories.

See also relevant articles from the following sources:

- web2fordevblog
- ICTlogy
- crisscrossed blog
Posted by euforic at 5:39 pm

Monday, July 10, 2006

Dgroup administrators meet to compare notes

Fifteen people working as administrators and moderators of discussion groups on the Dgroups platform met up last week to exchange experiences and lessons using Dgroups.

Dgroups was created in 2002 and is currently supported by some 21 organizations – such as DFID, IDRC, IICD, OneWorld and the World Bank. These have combined to create and sustain a platform that has allowed almost 60,000 people to exchange information, prepare positions, hold conferences, collaborate on joint ventures, and generally engage in dialogue that supports more inclusive and participatory forms of development.

In recent years, both the number of new groups and new users has grown rapidly and participants in the ICCO-hosted workshop in Utrecht were keen to exchange ways to make most effective use of their Dgroups.

To feed the discussions, participants from ECDPM, FAO, IICD, INASP, and KIT shared their experiences using the platform. A striking element from these, and other experiences brought to the discussions, was the great variety of uses that the platform is being used for.

Building on an earlier 2004 study on the uses of Dgroups in Latin America, participants sought to characterize their uses in the following categories: Internal communication among people individuals in the same organization; Communication between organizations; Organization of events; Virtual communities; Virtual forums of limited duration; Work groups facilitating coordination on a specific task; Publishing and distribution of news etc.

The results for the 142 groups administered by participants in the workshop showed that 33% were for virtual communities, 27% for internal communication, 14% were virtual forums, and 10% were for cross-organization communication.

In terms of processes (or purposes) of different Dgroups, participants explored the notion that a Dgroup can serve a ‘rainmaking’ function – in which people come together, ‘seed’ ideas, and ‘condense’ collaborative activities that spin off from the Dgroup and its community. This goes beyond communication or joint tasking; it seems that (some) members of a group often build on the group interactions and dynamics to generate various other (unplanned or unexpected) products.

Other processes (or purposes) identified that justify use of a Dgroup include: Consensus building; consultation; networking; facilitating collective action; promoting events, public relations; questions and answers, peer2peer help; supporting other knowledge sharing or dissemination instruments; information management with group ; sharing documents, links, resources; learning; generating new knowledge and understanding; sharing with Southern partners; generating motivation and participation; testing and teaching; and promoting professional development.

In 2006, Euforic Director Peter Ballantyne took a coordination role in Dgroups, including the preparation of a forward looking ‘roadmap’ for the partnership and contributing to this meeting. A report of the workshop is available on the Dgroups ‘administrators’ space.

Visit Dgroups at www.dgroups.org
Posted by euforic at 5:14 pm
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