Back in February, European marketers, creatives and strategists from Amazon joined me in London for a new training course called Insights Inspiration. I had co-designed it with Laura Downey and Alexa Caldecott across several enjoyable and animated meetings in small rooms at Amazon HQ near Liverpool Street. The commissioner of the project was Mark Willock of ISBA
It was day long with 20 of us in the same room, sitting hugger mugger around small tables. The windows were closed- it was a cold day. All this seems a lifetime ago- and I doubt it will happen again any time soon.
So, like everyone else, I have had to adapt to online and learn to run sessions effectively in a different way. Since lockdown I have run 10 Zoom training sessions.
All my training is now available as Zoom.
This is what i have learnt:-
- Sessions should be shorter – no more that 2 hours
- If running a session of more than 1 hour, you need to use the breakouts function
- Breakout groups should be no more that 3 or 4 people
- You can have up to 20 in a training session, but few will interact in plenary “whole group” discussions. To get everyone talking, you need to run breakouts groups.
- As ever with training, presentations should be short, mainly visual and packed with examples.
The good news
There is though a pleasant surprise from going to Zoom. Training can be more international than before. At a recent Essentials course on Zoom for APG, (that I co-ran with Phil Barden, author of Decoded), we had participants from Latvia, Holland and USA as well as UK. APG already had an international reputation for excellence in publishing and training. Now people, who would never travel to UK (money and time not permitting), can take part in their courses
So, there is a silver lining