Episode 8 | Making magic and momentum in virtual events with Sarah Allen

Episode 8 June 14, 2023 00:32:06
Episode 8 | Making magic and momentum in virtual events with Sarah Allen
Remote Culture Club with Alix Dunn
Episode 8 | Making magic and momentum in virtual events with Sarah Allen

Jun 14 2023 | 00:32:06

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Show Notes

When in-person conferences became impossible in 2020, Mozilla’s Sarah Allen and her team had to move their renowned annual convening MozFest online. But how do you move an event focused on building community into the virtual world without losing the magic?

In this episode, Alix sits down with Sarah to talk about Mozilla Festival (aka MozFest)’s shift to virtual, how the new format changed her approach to the event, and how to create meaningful connection and community remotely.

Find Sarah and say hello here.

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For more, check out our website or follow Alix on Twitter.

*This interview was originally recorded as part of the 2022 Remote Culture Intensive, a course for remote teams to rebuild their culture, together.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:06 It's so hard to like find different ways to contain people. Once this the hour slot is done, they'll just head back to what's ever happening in their home, in their office, at the side of their couch. And so we really wanted to really build a, like what became our virtual venue, our virtual home for the event, and that was really, really important. Speaker 2 00:00:25 Welcome to the Remote Culture Club podcast. On this show, we inspire and equip leaders to build remote culture that works. I'm your host Alex Dunn, and even though I've been leading remote organizations for over 10 years, I'm always learning more. It's really nice to have you here. And without further ado, welcome to the show. Speaker 2 00:00:54 We've all been there. We show up to a remote call with everybody in our organization and there's so many people, there's so many little heads floating there, and there's, uh, so many people who are probably checking their email while everybody stares at themselves in Zoom. I'm very pleased to be in conversation in this episode with Sarah Allen, who is the director of MozFest, which is the gigantic festival that used to be in person pre pandemic and is now a hybrid event, um, that's hosted by the Mozilla Foundation. It is an amazingly dynamic creative, uh, community oriented event that is part participatory in terms of how the agendas developed. So they actually engage thousands of people from around the world to design conversations that they wanna participate in and facilitate in. And as they've moved that event, uh, to be primarily online, Sarah has learned all kinds of things about creating dynamic spaces when you have loads of people online. So we talk about organizing online spaces when you're trying to have that festival atmosphere. Um, we talk about what Sarah has learned, uh, hosting external community events like MozFest when she thinks about how organizations can host all hands. And we just get in the weeds of how to create inviting dynamic spaces, uh, when there's a lot of people online. So, without further ado, I wanna introduce you to a conversation with Sarah Allen, the director of MozFest at Mozilla Foundation. Speaker 3 00:02:41 So, hi everybody. Um, I am here with Sarah Allen from Mozilla Foundation, who is gonna talk to us about convening semi large numbers of people in remote spaces and being creative and intentional about that. Sarah, I'm not gonna introduce you too much aside from saying that you are what I think of as a role model <laugh> for thinking about sort of festival spaces bringing more joy into more engaging remote and online experiences. Um, so I'm excited for you to share sort of how you come at that and any techniques and practices that you would encourage from the most mundane meeting to sort of more big investments of time and energy that some of the organizations here might be thinking about. But before we get to that, do you mind sharing a little bit about your role and sort of what you do day-to-day? Speaker 1 00:03:27 Yeah, sure. So I'm the director of Mozilla Festival or what's more affectionately known as Mos Fest. And so to describe Moss Fest, it is, you know, part convening, part technology, part maker, part societal festival that gathers together diverse movements that are fighting for a more digitally humane, um, world. I've been on board with Mozilla since 2013 as a contractor and I started as an event manager. And then I've kind of like grown with the festival that was like a two day event in London with 1,200 people to where we are today. We have event basically that's 90 days in length and also it's had last year had just under 9,000 people part of it. So yeah, it's my role and the festival has gotten bigger and, and as has the community and the work Speaker 3 00:04:13 That's, I did not know it was that many people. That is, Speaker 1 00:04:16 Yeah, we recently counted and we've had just under 60,000 people through the virtual and real doors since 2010. So it's exciting. Speaker 3 00:04:25 That is wild. Okay. And that must have changed with Covid or sort of how you think about that beyond just, do you wanna talk a little bit about how your role and how how you convene has changed? Speaker 1 00:04:36 Yeah. So we kind of closed our 2019 ending a decade of the festival. Um, that had been for nine years in London and we were approaching 2020, we were taking a pause in 2020 and moving the festival to Amsterdam where we were thinking very intentionally about how do we create deeper and more long-lasting relationships? How do we turn up as a festival with good intentions and how we produce and how we collaborate and how we build. And we have, you know, I have aspirations of like, ha living half my year in Amsterdam as we built out the festival there for the next three years and like everyone else, you know, the world kind of flipped and it changed completely. So we were exceptionally lucky that we had a bit more time to think about what a virtual event could look like for us as a community and as an organization. Speaker 1 00:05:24 We were able to learn and watch and like talk to folks as they we all, as all of us as event managers and community organizers kind of scramble to try, reframe how we facilitated and connected across these spaces the first year in 2021. Like there's no exaggeration that we just literally put one foot in front of the other to produce the event. You know, the wonderful thing about a in-person event is you can put people in a doorway and the the, the venue contains them, right? The magic then will happen almost it's within itself in coffee queues and hallway conversations at the end of sessions. Like you don't need much way finding in a sense there, but how do you do that on a virtual perspec from the virtual perspective? And what we learned so much in our first year going o to other events was that it's so hard to like find different ways to contain people. Speaker 1 00:06:16 Once this the hour slot is done, they'll just head back to what's ever happening in their home, in their office at the side of their couch. And so we really wanted to really build a, like what became our virtual venue, our virtual home for the event. And that was really, really important. And then, you know, trying to bridge all the different platforms together to make it seem like this beautiful front, you know, where you come in and everything is catered for you within that space, which was very much like hodgepodge a gazillion different platforms working with with on the backend. Um, and I think we, we realized quite quickly is we need to understand what people wanted, how they wanted to connect, what they needed from these connections. You know, folks were like, some lot of folks were coming on and their, their work and their mobilization and their activism was going online overnight. Speaker 1 00:07:05 And we're kind of like, you need to lead us and to teach us how to facilitate this space. There was another section of the community that was, you know, we've worked on Zoom for the last couple of years, this feels like a natural progression, but what we wanna make sure is we can still maintain relationships and engagement and so how can you create those hallway conversations for us? How do you engage with folks? And then there was also the idea of like, well actually not everyone's starting out in the same bandwidth with the same access in the same space and with the same time scale to be able to produce something. So we worked very, very closely with our community in 2021. Um, we were super cautious in 2021 and I feel like where we are today is less so. And I think not only as a producers of the event, like and as holders of the internet health movement, but also collectively as a community as we work online, right? You know, we all know how to use Zoom. We now all know like have all been like entered into the metaverse in some shape or form. We've all like kind of played around with different platforms and like have logins for no doubt, seven different like chat channels. And so this year we're really trying to think of like if we have that bit more confidence, what does that mean for new ways to facilitate emergent and existing kind of communications and events? Speaker 3 00:08:23 That's really cool. When you think about what you learn during the year when you're producing MossFest and then you think about Mozilla as an organization that has to have internal conversations and debates and discussions and all kinds of, um, emergent things that happen inside the organization. How do you think about taking what you're learning during production and sort of porting that inside the organization and kind of what do you see as the difference when we're thinking about internal convenings that, you know, we're trying to find that magic when we are also hosting sort of external things that we might think of as needing more production because it's the sort of more traditional events that we're running in online spaces? Speaker 1 00:09:06 Yeah, I think like to the first part of that question, I think there has to be this consistent like circular movement between what Moss Fest is talking about, what Mozilla is talking about, what MossFest is learning and what Mozilla is listening to. And we, from the very, very start, you know, Michelle Thorn who started going from aspiration and Mark, um, sermon always talked about MossFest is like a drumbeat, right? It has to be, there's a consistent rhythm to the work and I like to talk about it as an arc in the work rather than the start of the finish. Whether it's a project a, a partnership or a method of convening folks, it must be seen as like a moment in the time that facilitates and sustains momentum of the work. And so when I took, when I think about like the role of Mozilla and our kind of strategic focus and the role of Mos Fest is a platform for our internet health movement and other diverse movements. Speaker 1 00:10:00 They have to be in partnership and a compliment to each other. And so if we think about the cycle of Mo Fest, we have now kind of, we have a live virtual event that is over four, five days and we are live for I think like something like 13 hours to try kind of sweep the globe to be able to, for folks to be able to connect. So 13 hours per day. And I think we've also then expanded the length of Timer Plaza is available and that people can connect. So at the start before MossFest you can come in and connect with folks and have conversations that will build relationships and also prep the work for the session. And then we have this on demand section where you can return to and listen to recorded conversations and also engage, continue to engage with documentation. And so what I recall maybe like the Lee side of Moss Fest post Live event, that's really kind of like kind of basking in the conversations and the collaborations that have started. Speaker 1 00:10:51 And then for us as a team to start thinking, okay, so what are we taking back to the organization? And as an organization we're focused on a future with trustworthy ai. We want agency and accountability, but we also like are kind of working in around these different issues. And so they might be like, how do we mitigate bias? What does transparency mean in this age? Can we have a future of data stewardship? And I make sure that the conversations that were had at Mos Fest are part of those ideas that and those deeper conversations we have internally, right? So think of Mos Fest as a, like a, a platform or like a speaker box, but the speaker can be Mozilla but also is our community. And so as we kind of return to our work post MossFest, those ideas and those conversations and those local issues that were brought by these activists in our community to the festival are part of the conversation that we're having of like when we think about a, um, what a data cooperative should look like or organizations or where, where we can, you know, fill in, like think about where our grant goes, those conversations are the education, the foundation, the continued development of what we're learning. Speaker 1 00:11:54 And then as you come around the other side of the year, our own advancement in our own thinking in Mozilla, then literally just two weeks ago we shared that with a group of 47 community Wranglers folks that have come on board with us who are gonna curate and co-design the event. And we started the very first aiding like, Hey look, this is what our stance is right now as Mozilla, this is what we are thinking about. And then we kind of say to these folks, well what, what is your response to that? Like, what are we not saying? Who else needs to be part of this conversation? And so suddenly the progress that we made as an organization and thinking about those topics and those issues are we're turning back to the community to see then where is the additional evolution of what's happening out in the communities where these issues are being most, are most impact, like are having feeling the most impact of them. Speaker 1 00:12:40 And so again, then it gathers again, you know, our open calls people responding to those kind of descriptions of like what those issues mean to those wranglers. And again, it comes to the festival and so it shouldn't be like a them and us, our practice as like mobilizers is so important and as we think about how we engage with folks, we have to be thinking about who else needs to be part of that conversation. So it cannot always just be internally there is this like terrible psyche. And I think it happens even more now with Covid is it's so easy just to be talking in amongst us, right? You could live your day by your calendar and just go to all those meetings internally talking about really impactful work and bigger projects, but you don't get a, you need to imp create that chance to look up and listen and like look out and see what else is happening out there. And I think that's the important thing that Mo Fest can provide important thing that Mo Fest does provide for Mozilla, but it also is a chance to, you know, again, like Mozilla is then able to talk about our own work, our own strategy, our own kind of partnership development. Speaker 3 00:13:41 Yeah, that's amazing. I really like this idea of it being an arc. I think that makes a lot of sense and I like that you kind of round the year <laugh> and that sort of the end of Mo Fest and becomes the beginning of your year and then kind of as you wrap up you start figuring out what you wanna engage the community on in the next mo Fest. That's really, really cool. When it comes to the sort of how, so the techniques that you use to convene in MossFest, do you all use those techniques inside? Um, Mozilla, um, Speaker 1 00:14:10 To a certain extent we wouldn't maybe call them the same kind of community organizing resources or tools, but we think about like the methodology of MossFest, right? I talk a lot about federated design, so it's like how you co-design something and in order for someone to feel invited in, they must feel like they've been acknowledged in the design of something that you're producing. And for them to be acknowledged, you have to be talking to folks and talking to those different, different groups and like making sure that as you are truly co-designing, you are co building something that is representative of everybody. And so as part of that co-design, you've gotta think about like what skills, what leadership development, what facilitation techniques, what comes, what platforms, what reach you can give to these folks. And so that is also a methodology that we call as like accompaniment, um, as like what we're doing as a Mozilla, especially around our fellows and awardee programs and the grants, right? So if we think about the superpowers that maybe we have within the organization or even within Mouse Fest, how can we use them as like an add-on to our partnership development so that we can continue to, to like really engage in this kind of like intersectional collaboration or this, this, this development of tools that are built with the folks that are going to use the tools. I think, if that makes sense, <laugh>. Speaker 3 00:15:30 Yeah, totally. I'm thinking um, specifically about when you, so I know you all just had this massive offsite for everyone, like 700, 900, Speaker 1 00:15:40 It was a non obligatory, so about like 800, 900 of us came. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3 00:15:45 When you, when you're thinking about that, I realized that you might not have been in charge of the production of that. I don't think you were, but like no, when, when you all are thinking about convening as an organization. So I'm thinking for folks that are thinking about how to use some of the techniques for convening mm-hmm. <affirmative> in terms of like these, taking Moss as an example, we put a lot of energy into sort of external events when we think about that. But some of those techniques are obviously very applicable to our own practices. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I'm thinking two things. One, like do you all use the technical spaces that you develop in mod, do you use those internally or sort of how do you think about the learning from how you convene in MossFest and sort of incorporating that into as an organization that's just like doing things, um, how you do that work. And then the second is thinking about in-person and sort of how when you, when you're together physically, sort of how you're learning with the sort of remote convening has affected the way that you convene when you actually have that lovely time in person. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:16:41 The exchange value between the the two. Yeah. I think for in the, the kind of technical spaces or what we build at Mos Fest, ma Mozilla turns up the same way that a community will turn up. So we always say to folks like, if you're gonna have that conversation or if you wanna have that meet up, you should have it at Mos Fest. If you wanna connect like cross organizationally, let's use Mos Fest as that moment, that virtual moment where, hey, the organization stops, we all attend this event and we attend like as participants, but bringing the work with us, right? So that you can still continue to have those conversations and you can have them in an open access, anyone can join in, which will, you know, how we got to our strategy around trustworthy AI was by putting up a load of nine boards of like big topic areas that we thought Mozilla could provide the most guidance for the future of technology. Speaker 1 00:17:30 And we asked the community, which ones do you feel like we can really, really make a difference in? Now, obviously there was like a lot of like six months work in and around it, but that's where Trustworthy AI came out of cuz the community was like, well actually we see you part here. And so like it really informs the strategy. I think the luxury of the virtual is the accessibility that you can bring so many different folks in together. And so like having a meeting Ma Fest is that kind of crescendo moment, that arc where everyone is kind of facing on the plaza and you can allow folks to come in, which kind of can get lost in that year round. Um, organizing as like a a, especially as an organization as well, that's like cross time zones. Um, but we really try to ask people to like use it as that facilitator tool to help you achieve, you know, we provide so much of training around like what's the best way to build an agenda that you can actually engage folks, that they can utilize an hour and actually achieve something in an hour. Speaker 1 00:18:26 You know, who can you, how can you prime the work beforehand by inviting folks in that might not make your event or like a, like partners that can help you deliver it so that that when you have that hour long session that it really, really works, um, to, to build. And so how we design MAs fest in that point of view of co-design with our, with our wranglers or you know, our leadership development of our facilitators, we bring that kind of learnings back into us as an organization for like maybe smaller projects that we do or smaller, uh, meetings and thinking about how making sure that all roads lead back to Mos Fest in a way. You know, MOS Fest is a jewel purpose. It is a shiny party where it is fun and it is a festival and we lean into the idea of socials engagements and you come to do workshops, but it also is a mobilizer, right? Speaker 1 00:19:13 It's able to convene all corners of our internet ho health movement and intersectional movements that do not identify with the work internet health, but come to be part. So you kind of have this like really encaptured audience that you wanna be able to utilize. And so thinking about those kind of community organizing skills that we then maybe bring back into the org but into an in-person event, you know, it's important again, when we start to like, as we were exploring like, what does hybrid mean, you know, we, we really, as a ma fest, we, we kind of quite early said it's really the power dynamic of a hybrid event suits the folks that are in the room, not the people that are coming in, um, from zooming in or like engaging externally. And so we always said that we, we would not mix the two. Speaker 1 00:20:00 And so what we were doing also for all hands was exactly the same. Now it was a force function because the internet was not great, but it also was like, you know, let's, let's use this moment to be here in present. Let's use this moment to think about who we are, the journey we've been on, who we are, what is a sense of self, a sense of practice, and also like this sense of place. And I think that's super important as we do return to in persons that events that you don't necessarily get online is like acknowledging the location that you're in, learning from the city, the country, the history, the culture, and how can that be framed into the moment that you are building is super important. And so that allows you to like think about, you know, the activism that's in the area and the folks then that you actually want to bring in to like share that work into your in-person event. Speaker 1 00:20:50 Um, my personal reflection is that it is important to keep the virtual events and the in-person separate, but they should be connected, right? They should, there's no reason why they cannot like be something that takes place offline cannot take place online and you should be using, we have a, we're we're developing a practice, we're gonna expand our MossFest house event structure, which is a small event we created in London that was like local topics for a local audience. And so it was specifically designed for the folks that were in that city and, and so they were the facilitators from there, we didn't pay for anyone to come in, we just provided a space, the structure, the training for folks, we kind of said, this is how we expect you to facilitate it and you know, we will bring that diverse audience and allow them to build that. Speaker 1 00:21:36 And so now what we're going to do in the next couple years is emulate house globally. So we'll have in like potentially in Kenya we just, we're gonna have one in Amsterdam next year in June. Um, and like think about other areas where we are building out, uh, work and community, but they almost be linkage to the, the the virtual piece because you don't wanna build in, in segregation or in silo, right? You need to be able to like bring those ideas and those learnings to the virtual space and allow the global community to respond to those local issues. And I think again, you know, when you're designing the building out a virtual event, think about ways, well, how can I take this home and still have that practice of facilitation and that accessibility? And you have to be so much more organized when you're virtually that documentation needs to be on point. Speaker 1 00:22:25 You need to know exactly what you're doing with every second of that short moment in time. Because when we're online, we tend to l live in these like hour slots that like our calendar or the schedule allows. And so thinking about what the prep that you would put into a virtual meeting where you would send the agenda ahead of time, you might ask people to respond to what the agenda's like and what else they'd like to see. Then like the note-taking you would take in that virtual space and then then the, the documentation you would send at afterwards asking people to collaborate. That's incredible tooling to bring back to even an in-person event and is really, really important so that the work can sustain and live on whether it is virtual or in-person. Speaker 3 00:23:03 Yeah, I think that's a really important point and I think, I think we've been spoiled by how close we are to the digitization of what's happening in conversation. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, I think sometimes we get distracted about how that can suck the energy out of a space because it's all digital and it's all spaces that we're familiar with and we're gonna go back to when the meeting's over. But I think there is something really magical about the seamless way that you can capture what came out of something to share it out so that you don't have to have every single person that you could possibly want <laugh> in a conversation in the meeting. You can sort radiate out after a conversation. I think that's a really powerful Speaker 1 00:23:35 And the work lives on then, right? Yeah. So it continues to grow and then other people can engage. Yeah. And it just has the momentum is there. Speaker 3 00:23:42 Totally. And it, it takes advantage of the sort of virality and the spreadability of what you're doing when it's digital. And I think actually it was really hard to do when you were primarily in the office and you know, I, the number of times that I wrote notes in a meeting and they didn't go anywhere, I didn't do anything with them because it wasn't digital is the, Speaker 1 00:24:00 The picture of a load of post-its on a wall like folder. Speaker 3 00:24:04 Yes. Cool. Okay. Well, I mean, my last sort of big question and then I'm curious if you have any other thoughts to share is just thinking about sort of from a mindset perspective, things that you've learned when thinking about bringing people together who might not know each other as well as people that work closely together, how to think about remote space when you're trying to bring people together and have them be comfortable, have them be engaged, have them be clear on what's going on. Like what, what are your sort of ways of thinking about that as a problem as you sort of design MozFest in other spaces? Speaker 1 00:24:36 I think we only learn this in 2021. 2022 is like, you can't recreate your physical event online, so you need to let that go <laugh>. So all the kind of like characteristics that you, or like, you know, the values of principles can move on, but you know what, what you designed for an in-person is is no way going to give a good meaningful connection online. So you kind of have to restart, you start again. Um, ultimately what we've learned as well a lot over the last couple of years is that people want, it's, it's so important not to be caught up in it just being this like one segment of time. Like how can you build those relationships in a variety of ways that build the momentum to that moment. You know, whether it is, you know, trying to introduce people who are about to attend the meeting or this in like this meeting that you might invite folks in, you should introduce them online, um, whether, so they can connect, they can meet each other, they can see each other in a more kind of like casual like, like, like that kind of like, you might call it cocktail hour conversation, but like how do you kind of, you know, people need to build kind of trust before they can really deepen the work. Speaker 1 00:25:50 And so as many ways that you can provide these little social moments ahead of time for folks to start to like recognize who's in the room, learn about who's there, who they're gonna co-create with, builds trust and also relaxes people into the moment. I think what we learned is that the folks that will be the face of the moment is the really important to prepare them to be able to hold that space. So for MossFest, I don't lead any sessions. My team are not like choosing any of the sessions. Our wranglers are the folks that are choosing sessions that come to MossFest. We support them in the development of what we call spaces, um, where facilitators will be have engaged and listed their sessions and we encourage our wranglers to host meetups with the facilitators ahead of the festival just so that people can like understand the bigger topics or learn what's about to happen. Speaker 1 00:26:42 And then we also then spend time with our facilitators to train them so that they feel empowered to use the technology. You'd be surprised how many people dunno where the mute button is on a Zoom call, but also like that their documentation is ready, that it's open and accessible, that like they, you know, know how to put on like closed captioning because those folks are ultimately going to be the face of our festival. It will be, they will be welcoming people in. And a lot of times what happens with online engagement is some folks just come in for one meeting. You hope and aspire that they will spend the entire day online with you across the week and they never, never do. And so you have to realize that they're picking and choosing how they engage with you. So what you want them to feel and what you wanna build is, is beyond that moment of that online event or that online meeting. Speaker 1 00:27:27 It has to be much bigger. And I think then it's again, it's like thinking about how you sustain the momentum afterwards. Like giving people agency and access to whether your platform, your documentation, your mural boards, the, the on-demand content is really important for them to like, feel like that they can come in and utilize it. The at their own pace and their own time afterwards is like, we've seen so much value in that from Mos Fest afterwards. The biggest thing that we've learned this year is, you know, as I, in 2021 we tiptoed in, we were like, let's keep this really simple. Like we over rotated on the idea of we have a privacy or like a recording document where we towed everybody while everything was happening with recording and how you could, if you didn't want to be recorded, how your voice couldn't be captured or how you could remove your, your face or how you could retain anonymity even in the conversations. Speaker 1 00:28:20 And then like the kind of like where everything was going to be housed and how people would reuse it. And you know, there was a lot of care thinking of like what types of like platforms we would use to make sure that we are able to like, capture people who have like a stable internet, but also folks that are connecting with their phone or with very low bandwidth. And now we realize that the community is way more confident online than we were, than we are, right? And so they wanna be experimental in the platforms that they are engaging in. They, they don't need to be handheld in a certain way, but also, and so like the types of like where and how we convene people on 2D and 3D platforms is very much gonna change next year. We'll still provide that, like, that engagement of like the, what I would call traditional in this day and age of Zoom conversations, but you can also have conversations in spatial chat or like Mozilla hubs and like how to facilitate that. Speaker 1 00:29:11 And we also, one big thing is that we realized that MozFest is also providing a platform. People wanted to take that work away with them, right? So people will present and do an incredible presentation and do breakout groups and then record it and then immediately they wanted to reuse it. And at the start we were like, no, you can't because we put so much emphasis on like people's like agreement for like how they participate and how they engage and how everything is used and how their conversation is shared. And then we realized last year that people now are very confident in how they engage online and almost are like wondering why the content is not being shared more freely and more like broadly. And so that's one of the pieces that we're going to cherish because that will be incredible if a conversation between two activists or two partners around potential work that's being built or a project that they're looking for input then is able to live on beyond where we think Mos Fest reach is or beyond where our facilitators reach is. It begins, it's kind of like you're giving more agency for the work to travel even further and in different ways than we would've thought about it in the last couple of years. Speaker 3 00:30:20 Which kind of takes us to the very beginning when you were saying that, making sure that you're having meaningful conversations with the people that you're convening about how they wanna be convened because you can make so many assumptions about what people want, what they need, what they expect. And unless you actually confirm that, uh, and also give them space to articulate, you know, all the ways they are disagreeing with you or want something different, um, you'll never know. Mm-hmm. And I think that's just mm-hmm. A really good reminder whether you're organizing a five person team, meeting a hundred person, all hands of 500 person festival, whatever, that like regular review and conversation about how people want to come together feels like a really important takeaway. Speaker 1 00:31:00 Yeah. It's consistently changing and the platforms are constantly evolving and how, and you know, even down to people's attention spans, right? You know, we, we as a team, we're constantly trying to reimagine how we convene as a team and an hour never seems enough as like an online team meeting, but what if it's, you know, what if you're leaving people like little voice notes and like what if people are just working a mirror board but without like Zoom and like just trying to be a bit more inventive of like how we can connect with each other, um, in this constantly evolving space. Um, and checking in with folks what feels right and what they're able to feel like they feel confident and empowered to engage in is super important. Speaker 3 00:31:39 Yeah. Cool. Speaker 1 00:31:40 Okay. Speaker 3 00:31:41 I say we end it there. This is amazing. Okay. Thank you. That was a knowledge drop if I've ever heard one <laugh>, I really appreciate it.

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Episode 11 | Lessons from a remote freelancer with Soizic Pénicaud

This week, digital rights researcher, consultant, and facilitator Soizic Pénicaud joins us to share remote wisdom from an organisational outsider. Whether you’re a freelancer...

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