session facilitating

Session facilitating refers to facilitating a brainstorming session at an IndieWebCamp event. Session facilitators are responsible for setting the discussion topic/goal and keeping the conversation on track. Facilitators do not need to be an expert on the topic. The facilitator should also make sure they or someone else is taking notes (See How to take notes during IndieWebCamp)

Suggest a topic

Choose something you want to discuss in a brainstorming session. It can be a discussion, an extended demo, a help or intro session, etc.

Discussions can be broad and open-ended or more specific and targeted. Decide what kind of session you want to have and choose your topic accordingly — if you want to talk about font colors and sizes, "design" is probably too broad a topic.

There might be a tendency to worry that if you choose something too narrow, there will not be enough to talk about, but that's usually not the case! (In fact it can be the opposite). 45 minutes goes by quickly when you are analyzing examples or digging into the details of implementation.

Session Goals

What do you want to get out of your session?

Consider whether your session can produce some documentation, research, working example, actionable to-do list, or other artifact.

This can help focus the session and can give people ideas of things to work on on the second day.

Steps for a more successful session

Steps for session facilitators to take for a more successful session:

1. Start remote participation
   • E.g. use a spare laptop or join the physical room to the Zoom for the session
2. Sound/video check confirmation with a remote participant
3. Tell the Zoom host that you are ready to begin and to start recording. Or have someone in the room with you start the recording. You should hear the mechanized Zoom voice:
   • "This session is being recorded"
4. Announce the IndieWebCamp (city and year), name/topic of the session, and your name as facilitator
5. Ask if someone is able to open the Etherpad for the session and take notes, and thank them (sometimes remote folks can help with this!)
6. Actively invite inclusive participation, with questions etc., from the less vocal folks in the room
7. Keep discussions focused on the topics. Ask people bringing up tangential topics to take them to the chat or preferably record them in the Etherpad for async exploration later
8. With 5min remaining, ask if anyone has a summary sentence or observation to share on the topic. If someone starts meandering, ask them if it's ok if they explore further in chat (or type the rest into the Etherpad), and call on the next person.
9. With 1min remaining
   • thank the participants
   • give a 30s very brief summary of what you got out of the session
   • remind people to add their thoughts to the Etherpad
10. End of session time, tell the Zoom host that you are ready to stop recording. You should hear the mechanized Zoom voice:
    • "Recording has stopped"
11. Promptly encourage folks to find their next session, and tidy up the room for the next session in that room.
12. If anyone drew or took notes on a whiteboard, make sure to take a photo of the end result and upload to the wiki

Tips for more useful notes

Useful documentation falls on a spectrum (ordered roughly from good to excellent).

• have multiple people participate
• producing some notes in IRC -> etherpad -> wiki
• documenting existing examples (textually)
• document them with screenshots
• documenting existing UI flows (beyond just one screenshot)
• coming up with (better) indie web user flows
  • a textual descriptions / lists of steps
  • mockups (drawings, sketches)
  • HTML+CSS samples
  • working examples

See Also

• introductions
• IndieWebCamps
• IndieWebCamp Organizing
• Events
• etherpad
• wikifying
• discuss
• Virtual_HWC#Platforms