Are your workshops online, virtual or remote?
Over the course of the last two months Arup Workshop has facilitated or supported over 40 project workshops.
We’ve given a lot of thought to what we call these workshops, connected with each other in video conferences and using collaborative tools like Miro, MS Teams and OneDrive.
Online workshop has quickly become our preferred term for these sessions.
Not remote, not virtual
The other terms that you’ll hear people using are ‘virtual workshops’ or ‘remote workshops’
There are a few reasons why we avoid these terms:
- These are actual workshops, not virtual.
Insights are real, and decisions are actually, not virtually, made. - In isolation, people want to connect, not be remote.
So let’s not say remote.
Why make the distinction?
Client trust, and agreement with the most, are why.
- Clients need to trust that the workshops are valid and conclusive
- Most people call them online workshops anyway
Client trust in workshops
At this challenging time we need to assure clients that their workshops, now almost entirely online, can be trusted.
In most projects there will be workshops held to explore, collaborate, and decide, to develop ideas, resolve on strategy and define roadmaps.
These workshops are on the critical path, and are where we find the essential insights and make the important investment decisions. Projects need a range of sessions. There will be engagement with leaders, stakeholders, and communities to discover, co-design and align. The technical aspects of the plan may need to be discussed. Investment logic mapped, design charettes convened, and risk assessments made.
In 2020 these workshops will be mostly online, with participants mostly off-site.
To suggest at any point, in any way, that the workshop would “be better in person” is to place a question in the mind of all that this online workshop is not as good, or not sufficient. Unless assured participants in the process may become uncertain, and lose faith. We should affirm rather that the online workshop is equivalent to the standard expected.
At Arup Workshop we’ve come to the view that online workshops are often better than offline workshops, which I’ll cover in another post.
Most people call them ‘online workshops’ anyway
Data from Google on user’s online searches agrees with these distinctions. On Google Trends, the search terms ‘online workshops’ outperform ‘remote workshops’ and ‘virtual workshops’ by factors of more than 10x and 5x respectively.
Unless there’s some compelling reason to do otherwise, the best course of action is to call things what other people call them.
A few other thoughts
In-person
All workshops are in-person, whether online or together in a room or at a desk.
In real life
Sometimes, you may hear the term ‘in real life’ for the idea of getting together in a meeting room.
With some workshop participants sitting at their own kitchen table, alongside their life partner on a noisy call, a dog barking somewhere, a child asking for lunch, and two loaves of sourdough in the oven, if anything the real life of all is now more fully on show.
The point is that all workshops whether online or offline are held in real life.
All online, or all offline
When designing a workshop, we don’t mix online and offline in the same session. To do so creates a confused, and less productive session, usually disadvantaging the online participants. We instead have two, related conversations — one online, and one offline. Sounds like double the effort, which it isn’t, but it is twice as good.
Arup Workshop
This material is brought to you by Arup Workshop.
Arup Workshop is the strategic, creative and technical collaborative design group within Arup Australasia.
Arup Workshop brings expert facilitators together with tried and tested collaborative platforms, so that you can continue to deliver your programs with confidence in this challenging time.
