Twitter, the ever-popular free micro blogging platform, is great for large groups of dispersed people to be in conversation with one-another, whether its one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many. Let’s take a situation where Twitter is used. Let’s say we’re at a large meeting or conference where many people are present (and presenting) as well as people participating online and interacting via Twitter. The moment tweets become relevant, captured and brought into the room or the conversation happening in the meeting, it becomes a kind of virtual live interaction with those physically present. This type of communication interchange has many names, but the one we’ll focus on here is “real-time feedback loop.”
Rich Reader’s definition of a real-time feedback loop is this: “…a method for capturing ideas as they arise and bringing them back into the group for examination through the use of social media. “
Last week I attended Social Media Club’s panel discussion where 7 social media professionals explored the topic of “Innovation through Real-Time Feedback Loops,” which was, as an experiment, video-broadcast live on Justin.tv in order to test the concept of a real-time feedback loop. The platforms used to loop back in communications were Twitter via the hashtag #RTFL and Justin.tv’s chat feature. Of the pros and cons deliberated, the leading sentiment seemed to be that real-time feedback loops don’t work the way we would hope and could be either overvalued or even grossly misused. I agree that you can’t have a conversation when everyone is talking, especially when rendered unorganized. But I’d also like to challenge this notion. From my background in the field of Organization Development I believe it is possible to turn noise into conversational real-time feedback loops if it is planned in advance and handled with care.
L to R: Jennifery Lindsey, panel moderator, with panelists Liza Sperling, Ravit Lichtenberg, Evan Solomon, Van Riper, (not in photo) Tom Foremski, Bill Johnston and Sylvia L. Marino
Let’s look at what’s involved. Designing and facilitating interactive organizational meetings or events are complex tasks. As a Change Management practitioner my experience has been that a well conceived meeting design is based on previously gathered input and expectations from varying stakeholder groups and is facilitated live such that the meeting allows for the inflow of new and often unexpected information from places like, well, Twitter. Facilitating the process of weaving new information into the deliberation that is happening in the room is probably the most challenging meeting design feature to conduct. For the sake of exploring this topic, I’d like to glean knowledge from a couple of experts.
- Sam Kaner, founder and executive director of Community at Work, is known as a leading expert on consensus-decision making and collaborative systems change.
- Lenny Lind, founder of CoVision, is a pioneer in the field of group engagement technology consulting.
Sam and Lenny co-authored the best-selling book, “Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making” (2nd Ed., Jossey Bass, 2007). While Sam and Lenny each have their methods and technologies (which they likely often use together) for holding effective, dispersed large-group meetings with real-time feedback loops, could these effective solutions migrate successfully to the real-time web and to places like Twitter?
Going back to the panel discussion last Thursday night, I’d like to point out that a couple of terms seemed to be bandied about interchangeably. The two terms were, “facilitator” and “moderator.” Simply to illustrate from last week, there was a panel moderator and there were two people facilitating Twitter and Justin.tv who did marvelous work bringing questions into the room that, at times, sparked new discussion. I’m not pointing out how these roles were worked, but rather within the discussion itself it was easy to think of the roles of moderator and facilitator as one for the other when truly they are different. A moderator is someone who arbitrates, which is to say that they may be in the role to decide, determine or mediate. Thursday evening’s panel moderator, Jennifer Lindsey, starred at meditating the flow of topics and opening opportunities for the facilitators to bring in what was being said live on the social media. But the discussion, in my view, overlooked the role of facilitator on whether real-time feedback loops could work.
Sam Kaner, a master facilitator, is quoted in Wikipedia with defining the role: “The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking and practice. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility. By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements.” Could these skills turn the tide of noise making into meaningful conversation with real-time feedback loops?
Let’s look at the role of facilitator as described by Sam in conjunction with what Lenny Lind has to say about meeting design. Last Fall Lenny gave his perspective on the use of Twitter for meeting designers and, in reference to the diagram below, shared his wisdom that, “The ideal design provides a robust channel for participant response throughout the meeting, which is designed well into the detailed process flow. Moving from the upper left quadrant to the right, adds repeated opportunities for feedback and collective understanding that is focused on accomplishing ambitious organizational objectives (objectives that actually depend on that robust participation channel in order to be realized).”
Click on Image to Open in Large View
I wanted to know more about what was being said on Twitter during the live panel discussion and discovered an interesting tweet that I don’t recall hearing about in the room. The gem-of-a-tweet I found was this, “Noticed that feedback from Justin.tv increased a lot when they heard their questions answered #rtfl.” This is great information that begs to be considered conversational and less like noise which I believe serves as a tip or the beginnings of best practice for real-time feedback loops with social media.
To be sure the facilitator’s task is challenging, especially on a platform like Twitter. But when it is supported by a little a design, structure and pre-communication, and optimized with the use of a good sorting tool for live communication, like TweetDeck, turning noise into insight-filled real-time feedback loops is bound to have real-time impact. As a social media practitioner with experience in meeting design and facilitation, I propose that real-time feedback loops using social media can work and will spin off sustainable, positive change.
What do you think?