In-Person Meetings

It's remarkable, given all of the scientific innovations that have occurred during the past century, that scientists continue to rely on a relatively limited range of communication tools when they gather together in person. Despite some signs of recent change, the majority of scientific workshops rely almost entirely on presentations as a mode of communication. Presentations involve the one-way transfer of information from a speaker to an audience of passive listeners. While presentations do have a place in scientific communcation, they are often ineffective when it comes to building and maintaining team collaborations. We feel that presentations should be one of a broad spectrum of tools available to researchers when they gather together in person. Below we list a series of additional structures that we have experimented with in designing in-person workshops.

Attendees of the 2017 NASA HiMAT all-hands workshop in Seattle, WA

Meeting Design

Planning for an in-person meeting should begin several months in advance of the event. We recommend assembling a small design team composed of several investigators who volunteer to help plan the meeting together with the science team lead and facilitator. The first planning call should focus on defining the overall purpose of the workshop which will inform the structure and design. At a minimum, the layout of the event should be documented in a standard meeting agenda, but a better approach is to build a design story board that explicitly lists the purpose, content and structure of each activity (here is a sample storyboard from our first HiMAT workshop).

Below we list many of the common reasons for gathering researchers together in person and provide recommended structures that maximize the liklihood for positive outcomes. We draw on past experience, trial and error and a collection of excellent facilitation tools called Liberating Structures.

The Importance of Invitations

Many of our facilitation approaches aim to draw participants into specific practices, or to conduct some activities within a framework or microstructure. Although the purpose of these structures is to dismantle many of the unhealthy bahaviors that can occur in professional settings, some particants may not view them in this way, and may not be ready to participate. Therefore we always preface our activites with a reminder that everything is invitational, and that if someone is not interested in joining in, this is fine.

Getting connected

In person meetings provide a unique opportunity to connect with our colleagues on a human level, without the barriers of remote technologies. We believe that all workshops should begin with opportunities for connection in ways that transcend our typical scientific conversations. Additionally, workshops early in the project lifespan should dedicate more time in the schedule to activites that build relationships of trust, whereas later in the project these can be reduced (but not eliminated!) as people get to know each other better.

Our basic strategy for facilitating team connections is to invite people into small group conversations guided by a simple and clear prompt. We often use Impromptu Networking or 1-2-4-All with an invitation like "What is one success in your life recently that you wish to share?" or "What do you hope to achive during this workshop?". For a more lively exchange we use Mad Tea and include prompts such as "I know a team is functioning well when..." and "One skill I would like to improve on is...".

Creating a Positive Workshop Environment

In-person workshops are one of the best times to articulate shared intentions around norms of behavior and codes of conduct. A code of conduct should be included as standard reference material within each workshop website (see below). Even for well-connected teams, beginning a meeting with a reminder about these foundational team elements helps create a welcoming environment where innovation can thrive. It also provides a mechanism for reporting violations to the code of conduct should these occur. It is important to remember that each time the group gathers together, there may be new members attending who need to be made aware of the boundaries and social parameters of the collaborative space. Workshops can also be particularly stressful and challenging, so even if norms of behavior have been discussed already in remote settings, they should be revisited when meeting in person.

It is important to note that setting positive intentions around team conduct does not mean we expect or even wish to eliminate uncomfortable situations. A meeting in which all attendees are adhering to a strict code of conduct may still have many uncomfortable moments; in fact, these are often markers of people taking brave steps to push their edges and address complex, difficult topics.

Strategic Planning

Workshops are often used to chart a course toward some collective collaborative goals. Commonly there will be unstructured group discussions with key ideas filtering up to the science team lead who makes the final decions on where the team will go next. A challenge with this approach is that discussions might be dominated by extroverts or senior scientists, and many of the ideas across other levels of the group are never given a chance to surface. Additionally, this approach doesn't foster the emergence of a collective wisdom that can, under the right conditions, lead to more innovative and high impact research than is possible when following individual ideas.

We suggest that a good starting point for any strategic planning is to hear from the leadership team about their overall approach to collaboration. When leaders are transparent about their process and are willing to be vulnerable in exposing what they know and do not know, this can create a greater sense that "we are all in this together". People will then be more likely to work in support of leadership goals and less fearful of sharing new ideas.

One structure we have used in past workshops is the Celebrity Interview. Here the science team lead is invited into a conversation with a facilitator who asks questions that might be on everyone's mind. Questions might focus on learning more about that person's leadership style, hearing their viewpoint on key challenges for the team, and learning more about how they will manage complexity and conflict (a sample list of questions is here). The participants are then offered an opportunity to follow up with clarifying questions.

Ecocycle Planning is another structure that enables us to explore the full range of existing activities within a team, identify obstacles and pinpoint opportunities for future growth. Other intriguing frameworks we have not yet tried include the Cynefin Framework and Future Backwards.

Sharing New Research Findings

Sharing our latest work with our colleagues is a primary motivation for attending a workshop, and this is traditionally accomplished with a series of presentations from each investigator on the team. Presentations are notorious for consuming a substantial portion of a workshop agenda because they require enough time for everyone to get up and speak, and people often go beyond their allotted time. We are not against having presentations as long as everyone tries to adhere to some basic principles:

• Give instructions in advance: The meeting organizers should provide a brief framework outlining what topics they would like the presenters to cover, so that the content supports and enhances the overall purpose of the workshop. For example, if the primary purpose of a meeting is to build new collaborations, then each talk should dedicate at least a few minutes to explicitly identifying possible areas of cross-team exchanges. An example set of guidelines can be viewed here.

• Keep it relevant: Presentations consume precious attention from the entire team, so in preparing a presentation a researcher should ask, "is this content potentially relevant to everyone?" if the answer is "no", then save the detailed content for later in the workshop when there are opportunities for smaller group exchanges.

• Keep it short, and take lots of breaks: Research on adult learning shows that our ability to absorb information is limited and we will only retain a small handful of key concepts. Therefore talks should be kept short (under 10 minutes) and sessions should be broken up with opportunities to take breaks. Never design a workshop that has hour after hour of talks with no other activities in between!

• Save questions for later: Question periods within or after a talk rarely achieve their intention of creating opportunities for collaboration and exchange of ideas. It is much better to have structured interactions that maximize the likelihood for as many people as possible to connect around ideas and results that surface in the presentations (see below).

• Stick to the schedule: Assign timekeeper duties to an administrative assist or the Project Manager. Explain to the group that everyone will be held to the time allotted, and set a countdown timer or small posters to tell people when their time is nearly up. It is the responsibility of presenters to fit their content into the time provided and to respect all the planning that goes into developing a detailed workshop schedule.

Fostering cross-disciplinary flow of ideas

Presentations often bring new ideas to the surface, and there will be topics that call for additional follow-up. For example, someone might wish to request access to a new research product they just learned about in a presentation. Often such collaborative exchanges end up being the most valuable part of any workshop, but they are usually left to occur opportunistically during unstructured social time, such as during the lunch or coffee break. Rather than relying on chance interactions, we advocate for esatblishing structures that explicitly maximize opportunitities for cross-team exchanges.

An effective substitute for question periods after a presentation is to invite the audience to record their questions on a form that has simple prompts such as "A possible topic we might address together is..." or "A way I could help you is..." A sample worksheet form is one way to set this up. The forms are then collected by the facilitator and distributed accordingly among teams who are given time to meet together and seek out connections and exchange ideas. Teams can also hold on to the forms they receive and use these as reminders to follow up with others when they return to their home institute.

Navigating complex team decisions

Some of the most uncomfortable and contentious experiences at workshops occur around topics such as data sharing and attribution of effort. Nearly every researcher has experienced challenges in navigating these topics, and things can become particularly difficult in a large group with a diversity of perspectives. Nevertheless, in-person meetings are an ideal time to have courageous conversations on these topics, provided they are carefully facilitated.

One facilitation approach uses TRIZ. Participants are invited to make a list of all the ways that the group could ensure they generate the worst possible result with respect to a given topic. Lists can be generated within small groups and then shared with everyone. Next, participants go down the list and assess whether any of their current ways of being in any way resemble items on the list. This allows people to generate a second list of counterprductive behaviors. Finally, teams review this second list and begin working on steps to eliminate these undesireable actions. Within HiMAT we used TRIZ to navigate discussions about data sharing.

Another approach is to have small group discussions on using the What, So What, Now What structure. The basic principle here is that conversations on difficult topics can often turn unproductive when people jump to conclusions. We minimize this by starting people off making a list of "just the facts", or the "What" of a specific topic. Next we ask of each item on this list "So What?" or "Why is this item important?". This stage generates meaning from the observations and helps people see things in a broader context. When this is complete, participants go through the list one last time and ask, "Now What?". Here we come up with specific actions, if any, that should follow from the obserations and meaning assigned to them. Note that in conventional conversations, many people jump into action (the "Now What" stage) without proceeding along this more structured "ladder of inference". In HiMAT we used this structure to guide converstations about manuscript authorship.

Meeting Preparations

Advanced preparation on the part of meeting participants will allow for greater productivity during the workshop. A dedicated workshop webpage goes a long way in helping people know what to expect regarding scheduling, logistics and overall workshop content. Ideally the webpage should be a dynamic, working environment that can be built on and modified during the workshop. We recommend using GitHub or other easily modified web hosting environments for such a purpose.