What the #$&($# is a Virtual Madhatters Tea Party?

Everyone knows how to behave and relate in a traditional meeting environment. We’ve been doing it all of our lives. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. We have protocols. We have Robert’s Rules of Order, for heaven’s sake.

Live, online meetings have introduced a whole new meeting culture – one that takes time to make sense of. One that takes work to become familiar with. Software developers have spent a long time planning for and investing in new, synchronous meeting technologies. They’re spending a fortune advertising them. But the truly astounding thing is how little has been done to address the deep culture change required for human beings to shift into new, online meeting environments.

It’s like a conspiracy of silence that makes no sense to me.

So, I’m a bit of a drama queen. And I’m more than a little fascinated with Web 2.0, collaborative technologies, and the promise of live, synchronous meeting tools. There’s never been much about me that anyone would call “normal.”  But when I moved from Austin up to a small town in southern Oregon, and launched into three years of research and testing of virtual meeting tools and strategies, I never expected to turn into a Madhatter. But I did.

And yesterday – just like a Madhatter – or maybe the Pied Piper – I led a cadre of experienced facilitators, trainers, coaches, and consultants right off the cliff of well-known face-to-face meeting practices into the free-fall of immersion in a live, multimedia virtual meeting. It was a wild and crazy experience! And, judging from their immediate feedback, they got out of it just what I’d hoped they would – all their pre-existing notions of how human beings “should” behave and communicate were flushed out of the dark corners of their minds and deposited on the virtual “table” for us to examine and learn from. Oh, goody! In times like this, that’s just what highly experienced professionals need to be doing, because…

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you already got.”

So, yesterday we used DimDim in a fishbowl kind of format together with a separate teleconference line at Freeconferencing.com that wasn’t as reliable as I might have wished. But I promised the participants that the program would focus entirely on the use of FREE virtual meeting tools because I truly believe – based on my own personal experience – that buying a license for a virtual meeting tool before you really understand the NEW DYNAMICS OF THE CULTURE OF VIRTUAL MEETINGS is an exercise in futility. And expensive to boot.

The best way to learn any new language – or any new culture – is to be fully immersed in it. And that’s what the Madhatters Tea Parties are doing: dunking the participants and their friends head first into a whole new culture.

Over the coming weeks, as we share Tea Time online on five Monday afternoons, the group will be opening to meeting with others in new ways – ways that we can’t meet face-to-face. They will be examining assumptions about dia-logue and collaboration strategies. And they will also be developing new professional skills – and new ways to deploy old professional skills – while we are, together, immersed in a series of new kinds of meeting environments, testing some new ways to coach and consult with others at a distance.

I’ll be blogging about what I’m noticing as we move through the Virtual Tea Parties. I hope regular and new readers will feel free to get into the conversation around this folksy kind of ethnographic inquiry I’ve gotten into. It’s a wild and crazy ride! And I’m lovin’ it!

If you want to read more about the programs – and possibly become a Madhatter yourself during the summer session, go here. I’ll be posting a new video for the 10-Week Madhatter Group Coaching Program later this week on the Virtual Meeting Startup site along with a more extensive written description about the program.

From Clark Quinn’s blog, Learnlets, December 8, 2009:

What if the learner’s experience was ‘hard fun’: challenging, but engaging, yielding a desirable experience, not just an event to be tolerated, OR what is learning experience design?

Can you imagine creating a ‘course’ that wins raving fans?  It’s about designing learning that is not only effective but seriously engaging.  I believe that this is not only doable, but doable under real world constraints.

Let me start with this bit of the wikipedia definition of experience design:

the practice of designing…with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience…, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality

That is, experience design is about creating a user experience, not just focusing on their goals, but thinking about the process as well.   And that’s, to me, what is largely ignored in creating elearning is thinking about process from the learner’s perspective. There are really two components: what we need to accomplish, and what we’d like the learner to experience.

Our first goal still has to look at the learning need, and identify an objective that we’d like learners to meet, but even that we need to rethink.  We may have constraints on delivery environment, resources, and more that we have to address as well, but that’s not the barrier.  The barrier is the mistake of focusing on knowledge-level objectives, not on meaningful skill change.  Let me be very clear: one of the real components of creating a learning experience is ensuring that we develop, and communicate, a learning objective that the learner will ‘get’ is important and meaningful to them.  And we have to take on the responsibility for making that happen.

Then, we need to design an experience that accomplishes that goal, but in a way that yields a worthwhile experience.  I’ve talked before about the emotional trajectory we might want the learner to go through.  It should start with a (potentially wry) recognition that this is needed, some initial anxiety but a cautious optimism, etc.  We want the learner to gradually develop confidence in their ability, and even some excitement about the experience and the outcome.  We’d like them to leave with no anxiety about the learning, and a sense of accomplishment.  There are a lot of components I’ve talked about along the way, but at core it’s about addressing motivation, expectations, and concerns.

Actually, we might even shoot for more: a transformative experience, where the learner leaves with an awareness of a fundamental shift in their understanding of the world, with new perspectives and attitudes to accompany their changed vocabulary and capabilities.  People look for those in many ways in their life; we should deliver.

This does not come from applying traditional instructional design to an interview with a SME (or even a Subject Matter Network, as I’m increasingly hearing and inclined to agree).  As I defined it before, learning design is the intersection of learning, information, and experience design.  It takes a broad awareness of how we learn, incorporating viewpoints behavior, cognitive, constructive, connective, and more.  It takes an awareness of how we experience: media effects on cognition and emotion, and of the dramatic arts.  And most of all, it takes creativity and vision.

However, that does not mean it can’t be developed reliably and repeatably, on a pragmatic basis.   It just means you have to approach it anew.  It take expertise, and a team with the requisite complementary skill sets, and organizational support. And commitment.  What will work will depend on the context and goals (best principles, not best practices), but I will suggest that with good content development processes, a sound design approach, and a will to achieve more than the ordinary.  This is doable on a scalable basis, but we have to be willing to take the necessary steps.  Are you ready to take your learning to the next level, and create experiences?

Let me briefly explain. For the past three years, Clark Quinn’s thinking has been of enormous value to me while I’ve been researching and testing virtual meeting tools. I stumbled across this piece today through a pointer in Harold Jarche’s blog and I have to say that this post describes in the most eerily synchronistic way the assumptions that have been driving me as I’ve been building my new coaching programs for VirtualMeetingStartup.com.

The Madhatter’s Tea Party Group Coaching Programs are, precisely, experiential learning programs. And as I design them, I’ve been focused much more on creating quality user experiences than on increasing or improving functionality.

Why? Because the kinds of people I’m most interested in supporting are already experienced teachers, trainers, coaches, and consultants who have developed high levels of functionality. They just don’t know how to take the things they’re best at and move their interaction with others into cyberspace. They’re subject matter experts (SMEs), but that’s not what’s most precious about them. It’s their compassion, their creativity, their curiosity, and the depth of their empathy for others that make a real difference in others’ lives. Like they say these days, “information is free, experience is expensive.”

Out of my extensive research and testing experiences, it seems to me the best way for teachers, trainers, coaches, and consultants to learn to SHARE THEIR LIVING PRESENCE WITH OTHERS across space and time is to set up situations in which they just DO it. And then fail to connect. And then learn from their failure. And then do it again. And fail to connect in another way. Learn from the failure. And do it again. Etc…

And, since adults really don’t enjoy failing – especially when they’re sitting in a room all by themselves in uncomfortable chairs, staring at a monitor, wearing a headset that pulls their hair and makes their ears hurt – I’ve designed the learning experience to provide regular high-energy interaction, in real-time. And what they’re doing is learning to dump their fear, worry, embarrassment, and self-consciousness as quickly as possible.

Because of this, the Madhatter’s Group Coaching Programs focus on the Madhatters un-learning how to act like subject matter experts – especially at a distance – more than on any deliberate, staged learning about pumping their expertise through the computer into someone else’s mind.

I’m documenting every step of the process so that the design can be repeated, quite pragmatically. But I’m definitely seeing that what I’m doing is creating an experience design that I’ll be replicating, not a traditional “instructional design.”

Fascinating work for me! Hard, hard fun!

Join us, if this interests you…

I’ll be writing more about all this in the days and weeks ahead. What do you think about all this?

Coming up on Monday, April 19th: the anniversary of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing in Oklahoma City and a Tea Party gun rally on the Mall in Washington.

For weeks I’ve been hearing Yeat’s “Second Coming” in my head.

Also on Monday afternoon, at 3:30pm PDT, I’ll be launching the Madhatter’s Tea Party 6-Week Virtual Meeting Camp. You can still sign up until noon, Sunday the 18th.

Of course there’s always darkness simmering in the bestial recesses of the Monkey Mind. I’m committed to rising above it, friends. Let’s use the internet to connect across space and time in real-time, not to divide us further.

Yes we can.

Here’s a pretty exciting report from last week’s Consumer Electronics Show. I’ve been talkin’ ’bout this…writin’ ’bout this…waitin’ for this…And now here it comes: 2010. Take a look here.

Get ready to launch your boat and head for the New World. Think: Columbus taking off from Spain across the Atlantic.

If you haven’t yet updated your idea of yourself from “watcher” to “full participant” in two-way conversations that happen from home – as well as from work – using something that looks like that thing we used to call the “TV Set,” it’s time to get started this year. Whether for conversations with your distant relatives and friends, your coworkers – or your doctor – pretty soon you’re going to be talking outloud to a TV screen in your home.  And then someone you know is going to be talking back at you.

From my perspective, the best thing about this is that we’ll be able to use video technology to be present with the people who matter most to us and free ourselves, from the passive consumption of broadcast media – including corporate-financed advertising of all kinds! WooHoo!

Think about all the people you’d enjoy being able to meet with from your living room:

- People you want to learn from
- People you want to play with
- People you can receive healthcare from
- People you work with
- People you want to serve
- People in your family you can’t travel to be with face-to-face
- People across the globe doing things you care about
- People…people…people…

The list can be as long as your curiosity and desire for engagement!

What do you think? Damn exciting, if you ask me… I was born before there were any one-way broadcast reception devices (called TVs) in our homes.

Who’s used one of these new telepresence systems in your living room already? Please share your experience with us here…

When times get tough, the tough get going, they say. Well, times remain tough, don’t they? I’m having so many people telling me they need my help but can’t afford it that I’ve decided to create my own Economic Stimulus Package for 2010. It’s called “Meri Bucks.”

Here’s how it works: I want and need to exchange my services for cash so I can pay the rent and buy groceries and fuel while we reinvent the economy together. Clients and potential clients want and need my help tweaking their businesses processes so they CAN take advantage of the incredible time and cost savings virtual meetings have to offer. Most people would really like to use web conferencing and other kinds of virtual meetings with clients, customers, coworkers, and suppliers. They just don’t want to risk losing their relationships with people. They don’t want to look stupid. They don’t think they have time to learn something new. And, worst of all, they don’t know how to tweak the way they’re doing things now – just a little – so they can translate some of their service processes into virtual meeting spaces.

On top of that, everyone needs to be able to squeeze every last drop of value out of whatever cash they do have. That means they’re agonizing over which help they can afford to get now – and what just has to wait.

So, here’s my offer: Throughout the entire year of 2010, I’m going to be trading in “Meri Bucks.” These certificates of service come in two denominations only, $1250 and $625. I’m trading them for $1000 or $500 in US greenbacks. This means that “Meri Bucks” are paying 25% return on investment.

Now I know – and you know – that no one is offering to give you a 25% return on investment for your precious greenbacks right now. So this is a terrific deal for you! And the deal is worth it to me because I have some holes in my calendar and want to fill them now. So, I’m willing to offer this extraordinary return as part of playing fair and doing my part to stimulate the economy in 2010.

I know you can’t afford to keep coping with workarounds that are costing you profits you need to pocket. And I can’t do what I love to help small business people if you can’t afford to get the service you need from me.

If you’re ready to make a few changes to your business processes – and learn quickly and painlessly how you can use virtual meetings to pocket more real profits throughout 2010 and all the years ahead – you can get an extra FREE 25% service from me by purchasing and trading in “Meri Bucks” right now. This could translate into you getting several team members trained for FREE, several hours of management consulting for FREE, several hours of producer support for FREE, or some other kind of help you know you need to get busy transitioning into virtual meeting space. You design your project and, using “Meri Bucks,” I’ll deliver 25% extra into it for FREE.

So, tell Santa. Tell your partners. Tell your CFO. Tell your investors. Tell your husband/wife… Starting right now you can use “Meri Bucks” to get a leg up on transitioning your business into the 21st century using virtual meetings.

If you’re interested in taking me up on this offer and want to discuss it further, please feel free to phone me directly at 541.488.7942.

You will need to call soon, though, because I have minted a LIMITED NUMBER of these certificates and when they’re gone, they’re gone. You can use them for service anytime in 2010, but you will need to purchase them now if you’re interested!

“Meri Bucks” to the rescue for 2010!!

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you already know I’m crazy about all kinds of virtual meeting tools. And in this economy, I’m especially crazy about helping people practice their chops using some of the fabulous new FREE tools.

DimDim is one of the best of the free web conferencing, virtual meeting, internet conferencing, online meeting tools out there. They recently published a new set of simple setup tutorials and if you’re ready to dive in and explore, you can’t go wrong using them. Go here to find a well-organized set of tutorials.

Then, when you’re ready to focus on how to think about and organize your virtual meetings so you get – and keep – the rapport you need with the folks you’re meeting with, come back and see me here. Your next step? Get yourself a copy of The Coach’s Short List and sign up for my next live – or online – training.

It’s not rocket science learning to setup and use virtual meeting tools skillfully.  It’s also not something most people want to do without some help – until they get good at both the technical part AND the relationship part. That’s what I’m here for.

DimDim just made it a lot easier to get started!

ComputerWorld tells the truth: Thinking videoconferencing is plug-and-play could get you into hot water.

This is precisely why I wrote “The Coach’s Short List.”Virtual meetings are not rocket science. But you can really screw up relationships – and jeopardize critical outcomes – if you don’t plan and practice well. And these days, no one’s got time, capital, or relationships to waste.

Ticor Title will be sponsoring an abbreviated version of “The Short List Workshop” with Southern Oregon REALTORS in about two weeks.  I can’t wait!

I worked with REALTORS often in Austin. They’re just about the most social animals on the planet! So I’ll be excited to see this bunch get a big-picture and crucial-details overview… and then take-off with it.

I’ll let you know how things go. Maybe you’d like me to bring “The Short List Workshop” to an office near you…

Live or online?

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Just watched a SelfGrowth.com live-streaming TV show and I have to say I’m impressed with the courage and creativity of David Riklan!

David is the CEO and rabid advocate for his website which aggregates the work of thousands of self-help teachers and authors. SelfGrowth.com has an enviable traffic flow and I’m predicting that David’s latest experiment using UStream’s live feed plus Twitter is going to ramp up his traffic even further!

The stage setup for the show had David behind his desk with a speaker-phone co-host whose presence was made “visible” by having the phone displayed prominently, upstage, on David’s desk. David introduced one of his staff members, the onsite “Twitter manager,” who mostly remained off-stage tracking participants’ live tweets, but made an appearance every so often behind the desk with David, too. Other staff members made personal appearances – sitting next to David behind the desk – throughout the show, as well. The team seemed to have someone juggling the IM/chat window on UStream, too, although I couldn’t get it to take my input.

David collected some questions ahead of the show, using an online form he circulated to his list. He answered some viewers’ questions live and punted some to his telephone co-host to answer throughout the show.

He used a very smart giveaway strategy, encouraging real-time Twitter participation (now incorporated into UStream as the “social stream”). Asking participants to tweet a “commercial” message for him made them eligible for a live drawing of a multi-piece CD/DVD set he showed. The commercial feel of that strategy felt more than a little tacky to me, but it certainly demonstrated an interesting way to incentivize others to broadcast your message  on Twitter if that’s something you want to do with Twitter.

The experience reminded me at lot of the early days of Access TV. And, of course, the value of Access TV shows always hinges on the creativity and mindfulness of the show host. David has been developing his community for quite awhile and he’s a pretty fair show host. I look forward to seeing where else he takes this approach…

Interesting experiment! Is this Access TV on the internet… or a new kind of Virtual Meeting?

Did you attend? If so, I’m curious to hear your thoughts about the experience. Did you feel like you were in a virtual meeting with David…or was this a second-tier version of the new ABC Nightline Format (that includes Twitter participation)? What do YOU think?

Before people are willing to heed your advice,  buy your products, or use your services, they need to trust  you. And building trust online is a bit of a tricky process.

Over the course of 20+ years learning and working online, I’ve been studying what kinds of things enhance trust when we’re working with others at a distance – and what kinds of things tear trust apart. I’ve spoken all over North America and Europe on this and other topics related to achieving high performance when people are working on teams.

This year I decided to make a course  to  share with web-workers and other people looking to learn more about trust-building, in particular.  It’s a topic of vital importance to most of us as people are searching for new ways to contribute in this volatile economy, isn’t it?

So, I’ve just published a new 10-day e-course at Virtual Meeting Startup that teaches “21 Sure-Fire Ways To Build Trust Working With Others Online.” I’m offering it free, as part the Pre-Grand-Opening festivities for Virtual Meeting Startup.

If you’d like to spend 30 or 45 minutes a day over the next 10 days considering three tips a day and doing a little homework to integrate the tips to your online meeting and online relationship strategies, please pop over and sign up.

Instead of pushing advice, I’ve made this course interactive. As you go through the daily lessons, there will always be an invitation for you to take time to do a short exercise at the end.  Day by day, as you do the “Your Turn” exercises, you will be building yourself a custom action plan that can turn you into a much more effective leader/facilitator of online meetings.

Helping people build trust as they work across differences – and distances – is a lifelong passion for me! I’m truly interested receiving feedback from people who decide to take the course.  So if you sign up, please feel free to share your honest thoughts, feelings and questions about any of the lessons.  I’ll do my best to address them here in the blog, whenever possible!

Enjoy!

For over a year, my friend, Tom Carroll, and I have been playing with free virtual meeting tools. Testing them, pushing them, breaking them, seeing which ones work best for what kinds of meetings.

My fascination with real-time virtual meetings comes from my very real, very non-technical experience as a child growing up in a divided bungalow in Chevy Chase where the upstairs bathroom of our home shared a pretty thin wall with the upstairs bathroom of our neighbor’s home.

When I was a curious little girl, I wanted more than anything to be able to “see” through that wall and “hear” what my neighbor, Don Jackson, was doing over on his side. Don was 10 years older than me and generously tolerated my crush on him by actually encouraging me to memorize Morse Code and tap out little messages back and forth with him on the bathroom wall.

I know. It sounds really silly. And it was. But that experience birthed my fascination with “distance” communication and it survives today in my desire to be able to “see” and “hear” what my neighbors around the globe are doing and thinking – without me actually having to travel around the world all the time to see them face-to-face.

Not that I’ve got anything against traveling! I love traveling more than almost anything. But I can’t live that way. After awhile, everyone wants a place they call home. But I still want to take adventures from home, too. What’s the internet for, anyway, if not adventuring?

So, from my home in Ashland, Oregon and Tom’s home in Austin, Texas, we’ve been taking adventures, using all kinds of web conferencing tools to have live, authentic conversations that incorporate all kinds of media.

Now we’ve started inviting people who have something interesting to share to join us.

About a week ago, Tom made this recording I posted today to Blip.tv. It’s the introduction to a 4-part conversation I’ll be having over the next couple of weeks with Matt Sweet and Rene Fabre.

Matt and Rene work for Ticor Title in the Pacific NW. It’s their job to help REALTORS and title people from Astoria, Washington to Ashland, Oregon, make sense of the ways that online communication has forever changed their businesses.

Matt and Rene are not quite Ren and Stimpy. But almost. They’re a couple of wild and crazy guys who happen to love exploring what makes Google tick. Their passion – and their work – is finding new ways to use social media to help professional business people make friends and influence people to buy from them. Every week they take their people into free, online meeting rooms at vYew.com to have raucous conversations about new ways they need to start  building their reputations and connecting to customers – online.

I’m still experimenting with these kinds of interviews, and Tom’s still testing out ways to record them for me, but I hope you’ll take a look and a listen to this one and let me know what you think about the format.

Over the next 3 sessions, I’m hoping you’ll get to see a little more about how vYew works and, at the same time, learn something about how you can use social media to establish a more visible/audible presence for yourself online.

Please share any thoughts or suggestions you have that will help us improve!