Online Brainstorm
Conducting a brainstorm can be done in many, many ways. This version I used for a session with limited time and all participants joining online. The goal was to figure out actions and next steps on how to improve a large program that was running. The topics that needed improvement were collected and defined prior to the meeting. The brainstorm setup needed to facilitate self-reliance for a great part and quickly guide the group to a broad-based and limited set of next steps and / or actions.
Prerequisites
- Pre-determined and defined topics.
- Determine duration of brainstorm rounds.
- Online meeting set up with break-out rooms (set the groups per break-out room if applicable).
Brainstorm
- Send participants to their break-out rooms.
- Start round 1, the schedule informs each group what topic to start with.
- Brainstorm for the duration set by the facilitator, use Miro timer.
- If timer sounds, groups move to the next topic (2nd row).
- Start round 2, take note of input of the previous group and add new input.
- Repeat this until all topics have been addressed and enough input is gathered.
- Make sure all participants rejoin the plenary session.
- Dot voting per topic: participants divide their votes, voting for the input they like best.
- Input with most votes is transferred to the area underneath (best idea or top 2 or top 3).
- Per topic conduct a round of brainstorming actions and/or next steps. This can be done plenary, with use of the breakout rooms or by assigning topics to groups.