GVDS Journal #7: Becoming a Featured Facilitator in the GVDS
As we start the month of February, there are three initiatives related to the Global Virtual Design Sprint (or GVDS) that I’m undertaking:
- The creation of a self-paced learning series for practitioners of all skill sets to understand, learn and execute on the design sprint process.
- An open challenge submittal process, allowing participants to nominate their own big ideas for others to consider and sign up for.
- A ‘Featured Facilitator’ series to highlight amazing practitioners that I’ve come to know and respect in the Global Virtual Design Sprint.
Let’s talk a bit about that last one, since a lot of inquiry has come up since it was first bandied about in our January Community of Practice meetup.
What is the GVDS “Featured Facilitator” (FF) series?
The idea behind this program is to showcase a GVDS award-winning facilitator as an option for participants to join up with for their design sprint in May.
This Featured Facilitator role would act as a promotion of said professionals’ abilities, company or cause. This Facilitator may being a curated process to the table, a particular challenge for participants to consider, or a coaching/advising directive to help others understand how to improve their collaborative techniques in an online environment.
Participants would be able to self-select which of these Featured Facilitators they’d like to work with, if their schedules and interests align. The existing process for creating a GVDS virtual design sprint team (cross reference someone’s availability, their familiarity with virtual design sprinting, the roles they want to play, etc.) would be utilized if a Featured Facilitator wasn’t self-selected by a participant in mid-April.
I’ve planning on personally working with each Featured Facilitator to help them get ready for the event in May. Some are planning walkthroughs of their new processes (ex: a startup-style design sprint for innovators), while others are building a coalition of professionals to work on a specific project. Others are looking to do a commercial application of the GVDS for an internal team coming on board.
Whatever flavor or variation there is, my aim with the Featured Facilitator series is to further one of the missions of the Global Virtual Design Sprint; showcase practitioners at their professional best by giving them every opportunity to demonstrate what they are capable of.
Everyone in the GVDS Community of Practice will be getting updates as these Facilitators start bringing their plans and programs online. If you’d like to sign for these updates (and read these GVDS journal entries when they come online), just sign up for our newsletter).
Other than that, please reach out if you have any particular questions about the Featured Facilitator program that I can answer. 👍
Until next time, thank you very much for reading this!
I hope you have a great start to your week tomorrow. 🙌
