5 Winding down, reflection and continuation
The focus of our guide so far has been on the main elements of online event planning and design process. This section entails many different questions, inspiring approaches and considerations, including strategic archiving processes, continuing the conversation, evaluation forms design, post-event care activities, new learnings and reflections on the overall process, creating new resources, etc. We will be working on this section in the future and our plan is to add it in the next edition of this guide. However, here are some of the threads that we imagine could be included.
Winding down, reflection and continuation
Evaluation / follow up / lessons learned
You would want to collect feedback, insights from everyone who was involved, participants as well as organizers - as this is the best way to learn what worked and what can be improved or adjusted. This can be done in various ways. You can dedicate part of your closing sessions to collect these insights. You can also organise and distribute an online survey for people to fill in after the event. There are so many different ways how people can share how it felt for them to participate, perhaps creating an illustrated story about the event, such as TBTT Global meet: Nepal; An Illustrated Journey with Questionable Accuracy / A Love Letter to the Gathering. This example portrays and collates all the visual and textual documentation of the event.
Remember that your participants need some time to rest, pause and digest what happened during your event. This especially applies to your team, as you were involved from the beginning. Plan for team reflections either in the form of a survey or real time conversations where you will collectively review the entire process and all of the segments: your internal communication, technology and challenges assessment, lessons learned. If you have documented your event, that this will also help your learning and evaluation.
Keep the connection and conversation going
Once your event is over, keep the conversation around the event ongoing. Most of your participants will still be online, and issues that were discussed during the event continue to matter, both in offline and online world. Use the energy of your event as your inspiration. Use the same hashtag / key word to share recordings of the event, post-event insights, resources, questions or any other materials. You can also use post-event additional time to adjust the entire material so that is it more accessible.
Systematizing the value of your event for your team and community use
After all of the hard work and commitment both from the team and your participants, the content of your online event can be turned into beautiful learning material for the world and also your own team. Think of the segments you can further use in the form of discussions, documents, images, illustrations, video, etc. Some options would also be developing videos, books, news articles, etc. Save all of the documents you’ve created in the process and start building your own pool of materials and resources that you can further develop and share within your community and beyond.
Resources, tools and our bucket reading list
- ACM Presidential Task Force on What Conferences Can Do to Replace Face to Face Meetings. (2020, May 24). Virtual Conferences A Guide to Best Practices. Association for Computing Machinery. https://www.acm.org/virtual-conferences
- (2020, April). Closer than ever | Association for Progressive Communications. https://www.apc.org/en/publications/closer-than-ever
- FTX: Safety Reboot | FTX Platform. FTX Platform. https://en.ftx.apc.org/shelves/ftx-safety-reboot
- Intersectionality | FTX Platform. FTX Platform. https://en.ftx.apc.org/books/intersectionality
- Storytelling from Remote | FTX Platform. FTX Platform. https://en.ftx.apc.org/books/storytelling-from-remote-safety-and-care-in-online-spaces
- Arellano, E. (2020, May 27). Power Dynamics and Inclusion in Virtual Meetings | Aspiration. https://aspirationtech.org/blog/virtualmeetingpowerdynamics
- Barry, J., & Đorđević, J. (2007). What’s the Point of Revolution if We Can’t Dance?(1st ed.). Urgent Action Fund. https://urgentactionfund.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/06/WTPR-Final-Book.pdf
- Brown, L. X.Z. Ableism/Language. Autistic Hoya.https://www.autistichoya.com/p/ableist-words-and-terms-to-avoid.html
- Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
- Davis, S. (2011, January 5). Facilitation Aikido: Part I. FacilitatorU. https://facilitatoru.com/facilitation/facilitation-aikido-part-i/
- Dolan, M. D., & Gunnarsson, H. D. (2020). Feminist Organizing Toolkit. Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO) and Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF). https://www.wecf.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ICT-toolkit_final_2020.pdf
- (2021, June 4). The Virtual Session Design Canvas V 1.0. https://www.fabriders.net/canvas-v1/
- Front Line Defenders. (2021, April 8). Guide to Secure Group Chat and Conferencing Tools. https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/resource-publication/guide-secure-group-chat-and-conferencing-tools
- It Gets Better. (2021, June 14). LGBTQ+ Glossary. https://itgetsbetter.org/blog/lesson/glossary/
- LGBTQIA Resource Center. (2020, January 14). LGBTQIA Resource Center Glossary. https://lgbtqia.ucdavis.edu/educated/glossary
- (2021, August 5). Intersectionality in NLP (NAACL 2021) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cryfXlYWWp8
- Novotný, K., & Knodel, M. Meeting asynchronously with mailing lists. GitHub. https://github.com/IRTF-HRPC/drafts/blob/main/draft-shmoo-async.md
- QueerInAI, O., Pranav, A., Bleile, M., Subramonian, A., Soldaini, L., Sutherland, D., Weber, S., & Xu, P. (2021). How to Make Virtual Conferences Queer-Friendly: A Guide. In Proceedings of the 2021 Workshop on Widening NLP. Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. https://sites.google.com/view/queer-in-ai/diversity-guide?authuser=0
- (2021, June 10). At #NAACL2021 Queer in AI helped host a D&I session on Inclusivity in Conferences! The panel was moderated by the stellar @multilingual_s and featured the wonderful @nsaphra, @devoidikk, @hadyelsahar, and @NanaYaaSally. Read along for a summary (1/27):Https://t.co/ROaBBhXzFx [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/QueerinAI/status/1402989921514655751
- (2021, June 25). Ensuring Virtual Events Are Accessible for All. https://www.respectability.org/accessible-virtual-events/
- Rewa, J., & Hunter, D. (2020). Leading Groups Online | Training For Change. Training for Change. https://www.trainingforchange.org/training_tools/leading-groups-online-book/
- Safe Sisters. Resources. https://safesisters.net/resources
- Salman, S. A. (2021, May 27). Queer on the Internet: The Politics of Visibility. GenderIT.org. https://www.genderit.org/feminist-talk/queer-internet-politics-visibility
- Shanté Brown, D. (n.d.). Check-ins for Connection & Care: A Growing, Collaborative List of Questions and Prompts to Help Hold Space (Collab). ly/checkins-connection-care
- Genderbread person. SJWiki. http://sjwiki.org/wiki/Genderbread_person
- Southbank Centre. (2014, March 14). Kimberlé Crenshaw - On Intersectionality - keynote - WOW 2016 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA
- Spring Strategies. High Impact Facilitation Intensive (HIFI) - Virtual | Online courses to build your capacity to ensure impactful remote meetings. https://www.springstrategies.org/virtual_high_impact_facilitation
- Williams Crenshaw, K. (2018, September 27). Keynote at Women of the World 2016 – March 12, 2016. Archives of Women’s Political Communication. https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2018/09/27/keynote-at-women-of-the-world-2016-march-12-2016/
- Workshop Exercises. Free professional development exercises and activities. http://www.workshopexercises.com