Multi-team Facilitation of Very Large-scale Distributed Meetings

Abstract

Abstract. Distributed work teams routinely use virtual meetings to support their collaborative work. In this paper, we present a case study of the facilitation that was provided for a very large-scale distributed meeting. Small teams of facilitators were recruited, trained, and assigned to each of six discussion forums of ManagerJam, a 48 hour meeting of over 8,000 managers in a large global technology company. Through examination of pre-Jam records, analysis of the Jam conversation archive, and postevent interviews with over 20 facilitators, we describe the planning and training efforts, and assess the impact of the facilitation teams on the meeting's effectiveness. Guidelines for effective team facilitation of very large-scale meetings are provided, and design implications for meeting support systems are described.

Crowdfunding inside the enterprise

“…Peers can invest in the proposal. Each financial support becomes a kind of "vote" in favor of the innovation, in a way that is similar to voting in idea management systems (IMSs) [2,37] and innovation management systems [3,11,21].…”

“…However, the IMS literature devotes a great deal of attention to the burdens that IMSs place on facilitators and decision-makers [2,3,11,21]. By contrast, crowdfunding sites generally operate without formal facilitation, and the decision takes place directly as a consequence of the amount of investment.…”

“…Famous cases include raising over 100 times the needed funding for a charitable purpose [25], over US$10M for a pre-release product [33], and over US$100,000 in a single day for a music project [30]. 1 For HCI and CSCW, the crowdfunding phenomenon suggests new ways to think about innovation [19,37], idea management [2,3,11,21], charitable giving [8,9], and amateur communities [18]. In this paper, we explore the potential of crowdfunding within an organization, highlighting participation rates, inter-departmental collaborations, and the diversity of ideas that were proposed and supported among a community of peers.…”

Flash forums and forumReader

“…As far as we know, characterizing a forum in terms of such dynamic features is new. Related work on Jams considers them as [35] or large-scale distributed meetings [21], and Slashdot has been cast as a virtual public [11].…”

Team Size and Technology Fit: Participation, Awareness,and Rapport in Distributed Teams

“…While travel budgets and conference room space limit how many people can participate in collocated work teams, the main constraint on the size of distributed teams is the scalability of the collaboration technology used by the team. As scalability limitations become less of a factor the virtual conference room can expand at least in theory towards a nearly infinite space [1].…”