Storyline User Groups - A Question for Group Managers/Hosts

Jan 28, 2016

Tracy Parish
By Tracy Parish

We held our second face-to-face user group meeting last night and the evening was very successful.  Lots of dialogue, discussion and sharing of tips/tricks.

It did occur to me that we had many new users in the room last night and I'm not entirely convinced that they felt free to ask questions.  I have the feeling there was a bit of unintentional intimidation cause by the "expert/advance" level of users in the room.  I did point out that no question is a bad question, and could guarantee if one person was asking then someone else was wondering as well.

I'm curious how other Managers/Hosts are ensuring that everyone feels they have an equal part to play in your communities that you are hosting.

Maybe we need to build in time specifically for the new users to ask questions?

10 Replies
Wendy Farmer
8 years ago01/28/16 at 8:36 pm (UTC)

Hi Tracy

we have a number of containers at various points around the room and when people arrive they are given a post it pad and encouraged to write any questions they want to ask or tips they want to share on the post it and put into the containers at any time during the session - they can add their name if they want or not.  The group facilitators then collect the notes at break times and the next session discusses the items submitted.  Works well and no-one feels intimidated as it is anonymous. More often than not the person who submitted it 'fesses up' when they hear someone else acknowledge they wanted to know that too!

David Anderson
8 years ago02/03/16 at 6:41 am (UTC)

Hi Tracy, this is a really great topic so I’m glad you posted!

Our user group in Phoenix is a little smaller than Toronto. We haven’t had as many issues with quiet users but we’ve done a good job crafting engagement activities that get everyone involved.

For example, we frequently pull from the weekly challenges for ideas. The video interview challenge is a recent topic we used in our meeting. The goal was for participants to team up in groups of 2-3 people and create a short, video interview featuring everyone in the group.

One person drove the laptop while the others helped collaborate concept and script ideas. Projects took about 45-60 minutes and then were presented by each group in the 2nd hour.

At our next meeting, we’re going to try the #EdCamp approach where each participant writes down a topic they’d like to learn about on one notecard and something they’d be willing to facilitate on another notecard. The group will vote up 3 cards and vote up 3 presenters. No one has to be an expert to facilitate and absolutely no preparation is required.

I’ve heard many great success stories from the EdCamp model and will follow up to let you know how it worked for our user groups.

Bottom line: I think you need to get people to do something. The weekly challenges are a great place to start for simple activities that can be completed within an hour or so.

Kimberly Valliere
8 years ago02/05/16 at 8:32 pm (UTC)

Tracy--what about forming a relationship with some of the new users outside of the group and ask them to speak up in a meeting so that other new users feel comfortable when a new user speaks?  We had a really, really new user/new ID at our meeting this week and thankfully he wasn't too shy to speak.

My group's issue is presenters/facilitators. We tried the challenges "show your awesome work" model, but that didn't really go very far beyond those who were already comfortable with me or Storyline. Now that our group has grown to nearly 100 in just over a year, I need to re-poll the audience to see if they have ideas of what they could present on.

We also really haven't worked out doing exercises in the meeting either, but I know that needs to change sometimes just to keep bringing people into the fold without always being presented to.

I bookmarked this thread because I'd love to continue conversations with the UG managers, share experiences, ideas and topic thoughts.

 

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