Online-Hybrid Meeting Format

Sharing critical information with key stakeholders to increase reactive feedback and meeting accessibility.

Online-Hybrid Informative/Reactive meetings are effective for linear presentation and feedback activities, but can easily put too much emphasis on the presentation if critical feedback if what's really needed at a particular design stage.Image credit: David Evans

PURPOSE:

This format is most useful in sharing information to a group of stakeholders and getting reactive questions and comments from participants. To use this method, prepare one or more design presentations along with a series of discussion questions in order to gather open-ended, qualitative reactions to the proposals.

DESIGN PHASE:

(highlighted in bold are the phase or phases most applicable)

Vision and goals
Site exploration
Program development
Co-design
Design evaluation
Implementation

MATERIALS NEEDED:

At least two laptops with headphones and microphone
Projector
Extension cord, preferably 3-outlet
HDMI, VGA, or other audio/video connectors
Printed presentation boards, if applicable
Online video conferencing tool, such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, or Skype (check with your stakeholders to see what tools are most commonly used among community members).
Wifi password for the venue
An additional smartphone and headphones with microphone is helpful but may not necessary

TIME REQUIRED:

This format employs synchronous activities. Time required depends on how many design proposals are being presented. Allow a minimum of 30 minutes for a single design presentation and discussion, and then add 10-15 minutes for each additional design presentation and discussion section.

SUGGESTIONS:

Do use this format when presenting well-developed materials for evaluation.
Do decide what kinds of feedback you want to specifically pursue and prepare relevant questions in advance.
Do try to adhere to the planned agenda as much as possible, but also be flexible. Technical issues may misalign the small groups' timing.
Do utilize structured feedback mechanisms such as questionnaires or writing pads, so that feedback can be properly recorded.
Do rehearse presentation timing among the speakers prior to the meeting.

Overview

The Online-Hybrid Informative/Reactive Meeting follows common formats used in public meetings where one or more speakers provides unidirectional presentations on design proposals followed by reactive questions or comments from participants (Toker, 2012). Due to social distancing needs of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were forced to adapt this traditional meeting format to include an online-hybrid component. This allowed for providing presentations to an in-person audience simultaneously with an online audience attending via teleconference. This engagement method is useful for increasing accessibility to the meeting under many conditions, not only when social distancing is a concern.

Organization and Process

This meeting format consists of three stages:

Introduction: All attendees (in-person and online) listen to a single speaker introduce the meeting agenda, project background, and speakers.
Break-out Sessions: In-person and online attendees split into small groups for presentations and discussions.
Wrap-up: All attendees reconvene as a whole to share the questions and comments that came up in their small groups. The speaker then concludes the meeting.

This meeting format is highly flexible on time requirements. However if multiple design proposals are being presented, each proposal should be limited to a five minute presentation followed by 5 to 10 minutes of discussion in the respective small group. It is important for the presenters to prepare discussion questions in advance to keep the conversation flowing in case another small group encounters issues that puts them behind schedule.

Steps

(Before the Meeting)

1. Prepare design proposals in coordination with a set of primary stakeholders.
2. Schedule a time and venue for a public meeting.
3. Gather necessary presentation materials (see side bar for list).
4. Delegate speaking roles for the meeting. Determine who will be in charge of introductions, wrap-up, as well as who will lead in-person and virtual small group discussions. Have each speaker focus on one format as much as possible rather than jumping between each.

(Day of the Meeting)

1. Show up at least 30 minutes early to set up and test out your equipment.
2. Open the virtual room before the scheduled meeting time to test your connection and audio quality. For this step, set up one laptop for the in-person presentation and one for the online presentation. The online presenters do not need to be on-site and may present remotely.
3. During presentations, make sure to have one device’s microphone unmuted in the meeting space, and mute all audio from any other devices that join the video conference. This will eliminate echo from multiple devices in the physical meeting space.
4. At the start of the meeting, have an in-person presenter address all attendees in both formats to introduce the project, the scope of work, and the day’s agenda. Make clear that the attendees will have the opportunity to interact across formats at the end of the meeting.
5. Run simultaneous, separate presentations for the online and in-person groups. If multiple design concepts are being presented, make sure all speakers are familiar with all designs enough to answer some questions about each.
6. When design presentation and discussion sections are complete, call all attendees and groups back together to allow attendees to share comments or questions with the group.

Case Example

This method was applied in November 2020 by MLA students at UGA for the Brooklyn Cemetery project. Brooklyn Cemetery is a local African American cemetery dating back to the 19th century, and the students were tasked with designing a reinternment memorial at the site. The project had previously completed introductory meetings, a community priority input meeting, an initial design concept presentation with the public, and a closed design revision review meeting with primary stakeholders. Following the closed doors meeting, an online-hybrid informative/reactive meeting was scheduled to solicit public input on a second round of refined revisions for four design proposals. The method was chosen to accommodate mixed needs of users, including social distancing, interest in in-person meeting, and limit technical difficulties encountered in a previous hybrid meeting format.

Planning for the meeting was brief. A date, time, and physical location was set with the key stakeholder, and a Zoom link was sent out with an advertising email by the key stakeholder to potentially interested community members. A one-hour agenda was set to include introductions, project background information, four rounds of design presentations and discussions in separate online and in-person formats, and a closing discussion allowing attendees in different formats to ask questions or share comments across meeting platforms. In preparation, a projector and cords were borrowed from UGA’s Center for Learning and Teaching at no cost with the instructor’s referral. On the day of the meeting, in-person speakers arrived at the venue 30 minutes prior to the meeting time to set up and test equipment. Online presenters joined remotely via the Zoom call. A single laptop was set up with a microphone to facilitate communication between the in-person and online sessions. An in-person speaker addressed all attendees to open the meeting and relay the agenda, after which the Zoom call was muted in the in-person session, and speakers led four design presentations and subsequent discussions, with a final regrouping at the end of the meeting.

The meeting outcomes were of mixed results. On the one hand, interfacing between digital and in-person communications was fairly smooth with only one device handling the call in the venue. Presentations elicited questions and discussion among attendees in both formats, and questions at the end of the meeting were unimpaired by technical difficulties. However, feedback was often limited to generic positive or negative judgements of an overall design, and some technical difficulties occurred with the in-person meeting, which contributed to a misalignment in presentation timing between online and in-person sessions. That misalignment was further exacerbated by lax adherence to the agenda schedule in both sessions. Most importantly, feedback was haphazardly recorded among different speakers’ notes, resulting in some loss of specific feedback wording and attitudes. To address these issues, presentation timing rehearsal, a slightly longer meeting format, and more structured feedback mechanisms (such as questionnaires or writing pads) could be used in the future.

Lessons Learned

This method is most successful when:

Circumstances or accessibility concerns require remote attendance or social distancing
Interactions with high-touch surfaces (such as print outs) must be limited
Speakers are delivering large amounts of information
Open-ended qualitative feedback is desired
Speakers and attendees have reasonable access to and experience with a common video conferencing service
Multiple speakers are unable to attend in-person
Speakers are comfortable discussing and presenting on all of the proposals in a presentation
Attendance size is limited enough to facilitate two small group discussions, one in-person and one online
The project will benefit from or requires public discussion

Sources:

Toker, Umut. Making community design work: A guide for planners. Routledge, 2017.

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