The software behind high-impact virtual workshops

“Good flow is invisible, but it takes a lot of work to get there” - Nikolaos Kaintantzis

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck take you behind the scenes of their virtual facilitation setups. It’s a follow-up to their earlier hardware episode—but this time, the spotlight is on software: the tools, flows, and tweaks that help them deliver seamless, engaging remote workshops.

What emerges is less about specific apps and more about a mindset—crafting experiences that support learning, participation, and energy in distributed environments.

Key Highlights

1. Craft Before Convenience

Ali kicks off the conversation by reflecting on how tweaking and refining their setups became a creative obsession—not just to impress, but to enable smoother sessions. The group agrees: great online workshops don’t happen by default.

“It becomes a passion over time to tweak things a little… and create a better working environment.” —Ali Hajou

2. Their Actual Software Stack

The team share a range of tools they rely on in different contexts, including:

• OBS: For managing transitions and camera scenes
• Stream Deck: As a control panel for switching inputs smoothly
• Miro and MURAL: Go-to tools for interactive whiteboarding
• Mentimeter: To gather quick input and keep energy high
• Slack: Used between facilitators during live sessions for coordination
• Jamboard, Teams, Zoom, Webex, PowerPoint, Confluence: Mentioned as tools they’ve used or adapted to depending on client setup

The focus isn’t on using every tool—it’s about configuring the right mix to serve the group.

3. It's About Reducing Friction

Mark emphasizes the importance of flow—both technical and emotional. Tools should fade into the background, allowing participants to stay focused and feel safe. Nikolaos adds that even internal facilitator backchannels (like Slack) help keep delivery smooth.

“Even if you’re improvising, you want people to feel like they’re in safe hands.” —Mark Richards

4. It’s Performance, But Grounded in Purpose

Stephan compares facilitation to a performance—but stresses it’s not theater for the sake of it. The tech is in service of connection, trust, and clarity.

“You can’t fake facilitation—people feel it when you’re tuned in.” —Stephan Neck

Actionable Takeaways

• Be intentional: Every tool you introduce should remove friction, not add it.
• Start simple and scale: You don’t need every app—just the right few, well-configured.
• Practice transitions: Good flow builds participant confidence and focus.
• Coordinate backstage: Use backchannel tools (like Slack) to manage live facilitation seamlessly.

If you’ve ever juggled tabs mid-session or wished your workshops felt more alive—this episode offers practical setups, mindsets, and inspiration from seasoned practitioners who’ve been there.

Transcript

Mark Richards: 0:01

You're listening to SPCs unleashed a shaping agility project that emerged from the 2023 Prague safe summit. The show is hosted by Swiss SPC, T Stephan Nick and Niko kaintances, Dutch, spct, Ali Hajou and Aussie safe fellow, Mark Richards. We're committed to helping SPCs grow their impact and move beyond the foundations taught during implementing safe each week, we explore a dimension from the frameworks competencies. We share stories about our journeys, the secrets we found and the lessons we've learned the hard way. G'day and welcome to another week of SPCs unleashed and we're back for this is like the fourth or fifth episode in this season where we're playing in facilitation. We we decided to let ourselves be geeks a few weeks ago, and we'll go, Oh, what are our favorite tools for remote facilitation? And then we spent a whole episode with Ali talking about how cool his desk was with his mobile media lab, and when we've got to have another whole episode for software, and we'll make Ali deal with it this time. So Ali over to you

Ali Hajou: 1:09

exactly. Thank you very much. And hi everybody. Yeah, we nerded out. We nerded out big time. But the thing is also that the we just, you know, we carried away. We were carried away because, I think it's just it becomes a little bit of a passion over time to tweak things a little bit and and, you know, with that, create a better working environment, either for workshops or for trainings. And it just, yeah, you just get carried away. You figure out new tweaks and new adjustments. And at least that's that's what I really loved about it. So while last time we really talked about hardware, I think we should have been sponsored by companies like Elgato and Logitech, because we talked a lot about them, or at least their product. So today we're going to talk much more about the software that we use, software configurations and so forth. So in this show, ladies and gentlemen, what you'll see is sort of a true destination of many years of experiences where you know, experiences where we try to host workshops or trainings online, and to do it in a way that is more than just Microsoft Teams and sharing your screen. So we've we've seen that. Well, we will see that as a matter of fact, after years of experimentation, we got to understand that our currency and online fantastic online meetings is actually not really fancy hardware. It is actually patience and creativity. And so we'll see that Mark is going to talk about good preparation and good integration. We'll talk we'll see that Stephan is going to talk about good preparation and optimizing for the sort of the most constrained participant. We'll hear Niko to talk about good preparation and having a sort of a preparation sidekick. Well, and guess what I'm going to talk about. So let's, let's just start to just directly, deep dive into what is really sort of tickle your fancy. In this topic, I'm going to start with you, Mark, what is your true passion?

Mark Richards: 3:48

Look for me, it's variety. And I'm actually going to go to a physical workshop to illustrate many years ago now, the alpha. I went to the alpha of the safe RTE course in Denver, and it was just after the safe people had all gone on training from the back of the room training, and they got all excited about the training from the back of the room techniques. And so the alpha of the RTE course was like the first time where they'd gone crazy with TBR, but the only real TBR technique that they'd connected with was building posters and, and so we in this three day course. And by the end of the first day, I was calling it the build a poster course, because it felt like we'd sit down for five minutes and they go, now, build a poster of this. And then we'd sit down for five minutes and they go, now, build a poster of this. And I got so sick of building posters and, and I think if you want a great workshop, you want a great virtual training event, you've got to have variety. It can't be always do the same thing, because it doesn't matter how clever that thing feels with your hardware and software geekery, if it's always the same thing, people switch off.

Ali Hajou: 4:58

Indeed, indeed. Uh. And it's there's no novelty in it anymore. It wears off so quickly. It wears off so quickly. So we're gonna, I'm very curious about sort of your tricks, on how you make sure that the tricks and the trickery do not aware of. But moving on to Niko, how about you? What is your sort of passion, special moment?

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 5:28

So my case in this, in this part of the world, I try to be serious, so I'm more Swiss than Greek in such events. I want to be I wanted things work out. So that's why I have a less long tool list in it, because I want to master the tools I'm using. And so one special moment was in the case where it was a training in the beginning of COVID and Miro had to shut down. So while we were training, the people Miro didn't work for whole Europe. I get some slack messages in the background, so Oh, in my training mirror isn't working. How is it with you? And then we realized, oh, gosh, it's a major failure. And while my colleague was just showing slides, it was a safe training, yeah, while she was showing slides, I prepared in the background a backup tool. It wasn't one I used more a lot, but it was one I was somehow skilled. And so while she was showing the theory, I prepared the whole exercise again in a Google Jamboard, which, meanwhile, doesn't exist anymore, because they said, Yeah, go to Miro. Go to lucid Spark, whatever. So usually I have always a backup tool which I'm not so skilled in, and the good tool where I'm skilled of. And then we switched to the jam board. One participant wasn't able to use it because of restrictions from the company, but all were able to be in a group, in a breakout group, doing it, and then I was the one showing slides. And when we come back, Miro was back, and everything, even the old exercise, was back in Miro. And the participants was, oh, wow, that's cool. So we didn't realize something was down, and it wasn't magic, that the things come back to Miro. We have been always two trainers in remote setups, and we had, in the beginning, at least, always a technical facilitator. So we have a training around 1520, 25 people. We thought people maybe we'll need somebody helping them with the tools in the background, because of everybody is killed. And so our tech facilitator, his job was just move everything back to Miro. Just type, type the post its again, if there's no conversion. And at the end, yeah, they didn't realize that it was a downtime of Miro, and it was really cool moment, because was also the highlight for the people. So okay, we need more than just one tool or one environment. We need a variety also in the tool set. That was my really special moment, because, yeah, it was a cool service for the people. Yeah, yeah.

Ali Hajou: 7:55

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, indeed, if we're hosting, let's just giving if we're hosting a training in a just a physical, you know, classroom training. If the electricity runs out, I don't know, the lights shut down, the screen shuts down, or whatever, I'm very sure that we could still continue nicely with just a marker and with a flip chart where those kind of analog tools being dependent on the software platforms does introduce a certain risk. That's absolutely true. Yeah. Thanks, Niko, and how about you? Stephan, yeah. Look, life

Stephan Neck: 8:37

teaches you a lesson or two, and as the old dog in this room, I'm still learning new tricks, but all dogs have an attitude of, if there's a shortcut, you try to take it. So if it helps, use it that that's my attitude. But how do I keep focus? And that's probably my biggest challenge when it comes to the facilitation. You already mentioned that there's a huge variety of software. We already talked about hardware. You can get lost in those things. I'm having a very good wingman. That's my stepson. He's a software engineer. Guess what? Call email, do some chat, and you probably get the right shortcut to get the right software as fast as possible. And that's where my passion is. Yeah, if it works, let's use it. Yeah, I

Ali Hajou: 9:32

think I fully I have exactly the same thing. It's just, you know, that you have the that sense of of flow that you're super focused on tinkering and trying things out. It's like building a cabinet whenever you you know, it's like you've ordered a new cabinet because your old one, it was so rickety and you're going to assemble it, you know, you you're able to assemble it, but it just. It's, it's a nice moment where all of a sudden, an hour flies by, and maybe another hour flies by. It just you get, you get sort of laser focused on, on, essentially putting together a new product, or in this case, a new sort of software configuration for your trainings or workshops. So I'd like to, I'd like to hear a lot about that, sort of your experiences in that respect, which means we're going to move on to sort of the first question. First question is, yeah, you know, if you, if you would reverse engineer a little bit, you know where you are right now. We're going to talk about that in a bit. What kind of software did you use, also in the past to get to this place? So what, what kind of software did you use to make online sessions more engaging, more fun, more interesting, less routines? Um, um, go ahead. Who would like to start? Niko

Mark Richards: 11:05

is smiling so much. It's got to be Niko.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 11:08

It's if you wonder why Ali is irritating. I changed my answer while he was moderating. So that's a little bit unfair. So at all, I'm somebody that tries not to use too much technology, too much software, because I want to be skilled in what I'm doing. And in my case, we have a list down, you will see the list is very small. It's really, really a Miro is one of the tools I'm using, etc, etc. But I think this is a different question. What I found out, what is important to have people engaged. It's not only the software. Of course, it helps. So when I looking to you, it's really like being in a show, and it's really entertaining, and it's keeps me motivated, it keeps me looking at the screen. And I think this is one of the, of the of the secret ingredients you have to do something that people are not bored. And I'm personally have a very bad participant in remote settings. After five minutes, I start doing something else. If you don't, don't keep me attached, not entertained, attached to a topic. I started writing emails, doing something else, because I'm really somebody who thinks he is able to do multitasking, which I'm not as every human being, but I think I can, so you have to keep me focused. So what I do is breaking boundaries, not software part. But what can you do in remote setups, which people think it's not possible? So for instance, I sometimes ask people to stand up during a remote session. And so, okay, I have to move my camera. What does he want to do? And then once, I let them march in their office, because I want to explain what what synchronization means. And I really let them walk in their own home office, the one story you know, once we realized we are losing the participants. And then I asked my co teacher to glue a little ball next to her camera. And then when they came back, I did just a short summary, and then, oh, where is the ball? I didn't repair it because it's hardware. And then I throw it to the camera, and she just take her and then she continued. And people, that's what's going on, what's for a magic trick. And then we throw the ball to participants. So it's not the software part, it's, it's it's just be crazy enough, breaking the boundaries you're having, trying elements you have already done before. So I cannot really answer the questions, what do you do with software to make this this, this experience great for me. It's just do something that at least every 10 minutes, something happens every five to 10 minutes. And this was something also psychologists told us, when we tried to move to remote world, they told us, after 10 minutes, something must happen, a change of voice, change of person, an exercise or whatever. And sometimes I'm crazy. So I have enough ideas. The question is, only is my co teacher also crazy enough,

Unknown: 14:01

can your to go teachers survive

Mark Richards: 14:07

about you? Mark, so I, in the early days, I experimented with heaps. These days, I'm kind of boring, right? I fundamentally zoom Miro, OBS, mute, deck and zoom is kind of a it's a by preference. I like zoom better than any of the others, because of the breakout controls and because there's a lot more APIs for doing integrations with Zoom for sophisticated tricks. I like Miro. Like, yes, there are occasions where you need to use something else, but I like Miro. For me, it's for a while I was using lots of them in parallel, and I'd switch backwards and forwards between Miro and mural primarily. But I think for me, in the end, Miro one, and it just keeps getting better and better. Miro. Deck is a great little control tool. I don't know if any of you guys use it, but it's a I think it cost me like $20 and it's an app that does software control of all of the meeting software, so whether it's zoom or whatever, and it lets you hotkey controls into the meeting software. So, you know those times when you're going, Oh, maybe I'm if I'm not using a virtual camera, I'm sharing screen. I'm stopping sharing the screen. I am looking at the chat window. Whatever the case might be, you can set up hot keys for that, and it just demystifies. Because, you know, I'm sure a lot of you go through this, there are times when one client uses teams. You hang up on teams. The next call you're on Zoom, the next call after that, you're on Google meet and, you know, hot keys, which then, of course, can go into my stream deck. Are my friend and mutex great for that. And then OBS is like, you know, the one tool to roll them all in terms of fancy, sophisticated stuff, but I'm sure we're going to come back to OBS. I

Stephan Neck: 16:06

probably must admit, I must I must admit, Ali, I'm probably the boring guy today, because I I'm like, Mark, I have my my ground set, like OBS, Microsoft, zoom, Miro. That's it. That's how I'm working and what I'm looking for, and I'm pulling back the curtain. Now, I think you have a good list Ali of additional software that would spice up remote facilitation. Let's move back the curtain.

Ali Hajou: 16:37

Yeah. So you know, it's the I've tried out a lot of things, and it's actually it's very fun to host large events for a large amount of people in using some form of a platform. It requires a lot of preparation. Though I've in the past, I had quite good experience to use an environment that was called my bow. I think by now it's, it's, yeah, it's, I think, discontinued, but essentially, it was an online thing where you logged in just via your browser and your camera became, sort of the face of a little flying computer. That's sort of how it looks like, like sort of flying monitor. But then you could fly around through certain environments. And then, you know, the closer you were to a certain person, the better you could hear that person. The thing is, that tool, unfortunately got discontinued, was it was pretty expensive to to host something like that. But what it did is, first of all, you lost your first hour of the event because people would log in and there would be, you know, just, oh, this is so cool. I could fly around and I could, oh, I could hear people better if I stand close to them. Yeah, just to figure out the the tool itself, the technology itself, but it's what it did, is it kept people in the environment. So what do I mean with that? People didn't switch back to email, you know, that popped in, or a team's message, or whatever they they were there in the environment. And therefore, even if people were a bit distracted, they had the they were still talking with other colleagues while being remote. And there's, there's really many tools of them. So my bow was one of them. I've had some experience with a tool called mood up, which is meetup, but then called mood up. Oh, there it is. The video is over. So at and I've, I've set that those kind of environments up for for PI plannings, for inspect and adapt workshops for teams that are spread around the world or during COVID times when people were just, you know, really calling in from from home, from their from their kitchen desks. But what I figured out is that also in trainings, this can work, actually pretty well. Imagine that you would have a training where, you know part of your people are remotely available, so they're calling in. And another part is, is there face to face? There are tools and there are abilities to blend that together pretty nicely. This, this, uh, sort of a little tool called gather. I'll zoom in a little bit. You'd see me walking around. There's a small little puppet. It's, I think, on your on, you know, on the stream, it's extremely small, but I'll explain what I'm doing over here. Essentially, you're a small little avatar, and you can design as the moderator. You could design all types of things. You could design a sort of a large shared screen, as if you are sort of a main presenter, right? Which basically means that everybody would see the shared screen, and even if you'd get closer by, the shared screen becomes bigger on your screen. But you could also just walk away and have a sort of breakout room where you could sit at a table, which basically meant that you would have be able to have a private conversation just with the people that are at that table, which means that nobody else would hear what you were saying except for the people at that table. So for a conversation during a breakout that is pretty excellent, and I know that over time, gather has included all kind of extra techniques. So even in a breakout room, you'd be able to share your screen, and only the people at the table would be able to see the shared screen. So it's for PI plannings. This was really cool. But again, you know, it's the first couple of minutes, 1520 minutes, or whatever, you've lost everyone, because everyone's just walking around. They're like, Oh, that's nice, you know, I'm gonna sit at another team. But the thing is, if you would build that time in a little bit of a time for experimentation, and you would provide sufficient explanation, we always had, like, a very short explanation of what do you need to do and what can you get Out of the tool. Sure, it's fun, fun, it's it's funny, but you could have private conversations and you have a collective conversation. So you could sit at the table for private and you walk away from the table for the collective. And The simpler you set the room up, because you could really design the room itself. Now, the easier it is for everybody to to join. The nice thing is also you could very quickly search for a person. You could see, see it over here, a little bit on the on the right side of the screen. I think it's a little bit difficult to see, but there is a sort of a search function. Imagine that the search function contains a huge amount of names of people that are joining, so all of your colleagues, you'd be very it's very easy to just, you know, type the name of your colleague. It pops up, and you could directly have a one to one call with the person went way faster than, you know, searching in teams and basically doing the same thing, because you need to switch the app. So we've, I've experimented with with those kind of environments, they become pretty expensive pretty quickly. But I know that gather has a, I think a free version for up to 10 people, or up to 25 people. I'm not really sure anymore, but it's, it's, it's pretty fun to just experiment with that, if you have the space to do so. But as a matter of fact, you know, in the end, most of us, we present, you know, as a as a teacher, or if you are a teacher or a facilitator, you present your screen, and whenever you present your screen, it's good to be able to, you know, very quickly, annotate things on the screen. And you know, that just brings us to PowerPoint. And having a Wacom tablet, which I have somewhere over here, I just disconnected it from now. But it's, it's, it's, you know, this is hardware, I know. But the thing is, with this extremely cheap little thing, I think it was the when I bought it, it was, I think, 40 bucks or so. It has Wacom software behind it that you can configure per application. So essentially, oh, look at that. Stephan has exactly the same by the way, I knew that already because I saw that in your previous list. But you know, it gives you the opportunity to configure the behavior of this small, little Wacom pencil for your for your application. So for instance, whenever I have PowerPoint open, it opens up the configuration, or the Wacom configuration for PowerPoint, which allows me to just click on this small little pen over here, and it changes the mouse cursor into an actual pen. So I can make annotation, I can draw arrows, and there is another button over here. So there are two buttons on this little thing. If I press that button, that it would erase everything that I drew on the screen. And by by doing that, you have the ability to, yeah, actually, very quickly, you know, point at at something, and then, you know, keep people's attention like that. And I've, I grew, I grew quite to become quite a fan of. Is work on thing, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, there's, there's a lot out there that,

Mark Richards: 25:08

and that's three tools from your list of about 20, right?

Ali Hajou: 25:16

Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, yeah. What can I say? Have having a good timer? So, you know, I use a tool called as timer Pro, which is, the thing is, I'm using a Mac so this application is a Mac application, and it's, you know, I could just use it as a like sharing my screen over here, you could see that now I'm navigating through my row, which is, you know, the tool that we use for for our, our podcast. On top of that, I use a tool called spectacle. So if I move everything away, and I would open up spectacle. It's a little bit super mega small on everyone's screen. But what spectacle does is it allows me to very quickly, sort of move screens or windows into the shared screen and very quickly move it out again. So

Mark Richards: 26:24

just with this couple of keystrokes, you can do that with your stream deck, right? I could

Ali Hajou: 26:29

do that with the stream deck, indeed. But the thing is, I have most of most of my time, most of the time whenever I'm hosting either a workshop or at least a session, my hands are actually close to my laptop. So actually I have my my hands basically, or at least definitely my right hand at the mouse pad or at the keyboard. So with a couple of keystrokes, you know, very quickly, switch back and forth, and then I have another my left hand, because you can see around my right hand right now my left hand I have on the stream deck so I can switch between different scenes, and I could, you know, emphasize how what I'm talking about, I'd be able to add a little bit of an audio fragment in there. But the thing is, also, you cannot really overdo these kind of things, because eventually people get really tired of adding all types of little background music, you know, if, if you're talking about an example that comes from France, you might be able to add a little bit of, you know, background music that is related to France, and, you know, you could maybe even add a little bit of a screen, you'd be right behind you. But the thing is, I think that's a little bit too much, and I'd rather not do that, you know, to eventually people get fatigued of these type of funny extras. So yeah, if, if we were talking about OBS scene switching, because that's basically what you saw happening over here. That's, you know, moving from one scene to another. I know that Stephan has that as well. What type of scenes do you use Stephan? If I, if I can start with you, yeah,

Stephan Neck: 28:16

well, I, I'm using a just a bunch of scenes, a few standard ones. I might start with a waiting room when people come in, so they are not lost in space. I might even add some links here that lead them to the Miro board, if needed. I'm having an informal lounge where you can chat, or then you have, like, an intro. What are you talking about? What's the training? What's the session? What I'm mainly using is this left screen. I have a second screen with my picture in it. Or if I want to have the concentration on the full screen, I can just change. Hopefully you have some breaks. I'm using a timer as well so people know when to come back. Sometimes it's reflection time as well. Using a timer so people can get organized, because we're teaching adults, and we assume they can organize themselves, and depending on the type of training end of the session, you thank the people for being here, or if it's a safe course, these are my main sessions I'm using, right? So, yep, that's mainly it. And I'm using those scenes in a way. They're nested scenes. I can configure them with five to 10 minutes of preparation time to the respective course and training session, I can highlight I can activate or deactivate some of the parts of those scenes, like in here. If I want to make it more formal, I just introduce my logo. I can add some additional information if needed. I can switch it off. So, yeah, I'm using OBS in the most, easiest way, 567, scenes, moving back and forth. That's enough for the old dog. Very

Unknown: 30:13

cool, very cool. Thank you, Stephan, how about you mark? So

Mark Richards: 30:18

I think I'd probably add just one little comment there. And again, this is about dynamics, because if you think about when you facilitate in person, you've got dynamics. I sit down, I stand up, I walk from one side of the room to the other. I walk over to a table, like what I'm doing as a facilitator is moving the dynamic and actually sending energy signals. And there's a world in which you might look and go, Hey, we just saw some stuff that looks pretty like gimmicks. But there's a truth that says even just those little things are sending dynamic shift noises and creating something that's that's going on for people. So if I thought about OBS, and of course, I can't show things off because I can't do my virtual camera, or I break the live stream, but I think there's a there's a pretty standard set of views that everybody's going to have if they're using OBS as part of this. And you know, you might do them to various levels of sophistication, as Ali and Stephan have just showed, but I think there's other ones where you can go, you can really blow people's minds, and you can take stuff that feels ridiculously hard and actually make it really easy with OBS. So one of my favorites was a couple of scenes I developed. I have a set of facilitation workshops where I teach people facilitation, and of course, some of those are focused on remote facilitation, and I want to teach about observation. So I have this little exercise where I get them to do something on a Miro board, and I am capturing a recording of what's happening on the Miro board and a recording of what's happening on the team's screen and all of their faces. And, you know, it's about a five minute exercise, and then I play them back at, you know, times two speed, right? You don't want to sit through the five minutes and I say, Okay, you want to think through the lens of a facilitator you're watching, trying to understand what's happening. Take notes for yourself while you watch in parallel the video of what was happening on the Miro board and the video of what was happening on people's faces, and then we have a discussion about it. And you know, you get a really interesting insight about how you can use the design of your Miro board to actually generate a lot of information for you as a facilitator. And actually, the better you get at Miro board design, the less you need to rely on people's faces being visible to you. And it's quite interesting watching the two side by side. But I mean, if you think about something like that, and that whole idea that I'm simultaneously taking two videos of what's happening while we're live in the workshop and then playing them back to you, and I'm doing that by pressing two buttons on my stream deck, one that says, you know, record these two sources, and another that says, play back the top two videos in this folder. Being able to do stuff like that, and the kind of different models of engagement you can create with people. For me, that's the beauty of OBS is, when you go, I'd want to do something different right now, that's completely out of the box, and I can find a way to do it, but in such a way that I'm not worried it's going to break while I'm trying to do it. Oh, sorry, my screen recording didn't work. No, actually, it's like it's like, having CICD, right? I put the work in. That's there. I press the button,

Unknown: 33:45

yeah, yeah. And the thing is, it does require quite a quite

Mark Richards: 33:48

a bit of preparation, yeah, but, but then you get to use it to have everything set up nicely. You get to use it forever, like, I've used that particular scene and run that particular session an awful lot of times now. So, yeah, it was, it was tough. I had to play a little bit to figure it out. But it was also a really interesting way of highlighting a lesson for people about remote facilitation.

Ali Hajou: 34:15

Yeah, yeah. No, thanks. It's ways to capture the the attention. Ways to modulate the attention, I guess, which you know, with the there's a lot that you can do with those scenes, or at least with the camera V feed. But what if? What if you have, what if you don't use OBS? Niko, I know that you've, I think out of the four of us, you're the one who who sort of stayed away from OBS as much as possible. You look, you know, just, just, just not, let's not have it.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 34:54

It's a contest. Who's the old dog with Stephan? No. And I just realized why? Hearing Mark. A policy into mark. It's like continuous development, continuous integration pipeline is an investment, and then you can use it. Maybe I never took the time for this investment, because in my case, I did some many remote stuff before remote was popular, and I think OBS was somewhere there, but was a nerd thing, and I, for a time period I wasn't a nerd in my life. So I get used to work differently, because remote was was, yeah, in the years before COVID, important to me. What I'm doing is the one screen is always the one which I'm sharing. So this screen here on this side, it's always clean. There's no emails. There nothing opens it by accident. It's always the screen who is shared. It's like when Mark says in my OBS, I know, but I'm sure I have two buttons, I have mirror, or I have I have the slides, or maybe I have the browser, or whatever this screen is, the sharing screen, and there's nowhere, never, ever something else on it. And so the important thing, I think, is that you have a kind of a flow when you present, I think it's embarrassing. I say, Oh, I have to cry out. Oh, where is the video I want to show you? Oh, I need this, that. And I think that is it's, it's important to have a flow. And I I'm able to have a flow without OBS. And by the way, that's why I like, I like zoom so much they have a pose button so you can post the sharing while you do something else on the screen. So while for the audience, is a natural flow, while I'm talking in the background, I'm preparing things the next things I want to share. So why people have a button? I have to do it manually, like in the old days. So really, continuous integration pipeline. It's really a nice word for that, and that's a bit my trick. So I'm very well prepared. My timer runs on this screen here. Sometimes it's a mirror timer, sometimes it's a Windows timer, they have also a countdown. So it's always this screen here, and yeah, and I think with OBS, it will be much more easier, but I never had the time for this time investment, and now I'm paying for it. But never change a running system. It works well, so there's a flow in it, so it's possible without OBS, but if you never did the one or the other, I would say, use OBS, because it's easy. Installed at the end, it's, yeah, you will get lost somehow, at some points, because you're I realized men are already good in experimenting and trying and gaming and gaming and trying instead of just do it. So sometimes I'm really jealous of my wife. She just installs something and use it and it works, and I'm tweaking it and make more funny thing here, and more better splash, etc. So you can also save time by just doing it, and that's playing around. But I think we are all a bit children and playing. So, yeah, summarizing, it works without OBS. You have just be disciplined. You have to use some some tricks and not to to interrupt the flow for the audience and do some things in the back scene. Yeah,

Ali Hajou: 37:57

I think it's a very important thing that you're mentioning there when hosting either training or workshop or at least, or maybe just a big event, you're actually always busy with with the next thing, because you're, you know, setting things up as such, so that whenever the moment comes, you'd be able to show the right screen, the right slide, the right activity, the right whatever it is. And talking about that, because I've been doing exactly the same, let's go to the jingles, and in order to identify who is going to talk about the jingle, I'm going to give Niko the microphone. You came up, you came up with, yet again, a fantastic jiggle. Which was, you know, if remote facilitation, with all kind of software tools would be a cocktail?

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 38:54

Which one would it be? Yeah, this time, I chose kyourinha. And the reason is, if you hate your waiter or your waitress order the Caipirinha because you use them time for it. You need to take the ingredients. You have to stamp it. You need sugar. It's really not something you mix two bottles and you're finished. You really have to do some work, some preparation work. So it's time consuming. That's why I've chosen Caipirinha. It's time consuming until you're ready to serve it? Yeah, we heard before, it's an investment in time. The other thing is, I'm very skilled in drinks, but what I know is, I think there are 100 variations of caipirinha, so and extra wishes. Oh, no, please. I want to have a kyirosca Because I don't like rum. I would like to have more vodka. And please don't use this. Use this. So it's always something kyprinya Plus, and sometimes facilitation with remote software. Sounds like this, yeah, I want to have this, but, oh, maybe a little bit of that at that and that. It's time consuming, but at the end, it's a joy.

Ali Hajou: 39:56

Nice, nice. Nice, nice. Always talking about alcohols. Good, but Stephan, you came up with something similar. I guess

Stephan Neck: 40:08

it's not even similar. It's the same. I choose Caipirinha as well. It's about this sweet and sour, okay? And Niko, by the way, if you're talking to Caipirinha purists or dogmatics, there's only one way to do it, but the ingredient you can talk about for ages is the gajasa, which one is the right one, and although gajasa is not gajasa, so you have to find in your context, really the right one. What's dangerous about it? It's tasty, but seductive and it can cause headaches, right? So, yeah, I like it, but be aware it's dangerous as well.

Unknown: 40:49

We have conversation. So Mark, how about you?

Mark Richards: 40:55

I've got to go with a zombie, and it feels like there's a very strong rum thing to our drink selection. But I had to pick a zombie because that's what your participants are going to feel like if you don't put the work into designing an engaging session.

Ali Hajou: 41:10

Nice, nice. I think the thing is, a zombie is an extremely, almost like a lethal drink. It's super strong. It's just all kind of strong liquor is mixed up together. It's just a ticking time bomb. So I fully understand, and that's I chose something similar, because I went for Long Island Iced Tea, which is practically the same. It's just super strong liquor mixed up together together, and then you add a little bit of cola or Coke, just for color, and it's a very lethal, potentially explosive mix. It can be very dangerous, you know, making a little bridge to remote facilitation can be very dangerous for your wallet. It can be very dangerous with headaches. It can be very dangerous for your agenda, but in moderation, can be really good.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 42:07

Think it's our first podcast, so you have to be 18 and over or 21 and over in the States. Yeah.

Ali Hajou: 42:13

Exactly, exactly. So the thing is, let's, let's zoom back. So let's, let's go to what we are using today, what we are let's say the software configuration that, in a way, stuck around it. It passed the test of time. What type of, yeah, software configuration are you using today to, you know, make sure that large groups of people are still engaged, and that you still remain in control of the session? Yeah,

Stephan Neck: 42:49

I would, I would say, and I'm like minded, and I'm on, on a par with Mark. It's any functionality that supports breakout sessions, right? Large groups? How do you keep them engaged? How do you kind of control them in a good way? Breakout sessions. That's why I like zoom. Zoom is my preferred software. I'm still using it if I have to use MS teams, oh gosh, okay, you have to find your detours, like on a Miro board, you have additional Google meet sessions, MS Team sessions, for the breakout sessions. But how do you bring people back on time? If they are not reading your time, or if they are not interested, you lose your your people, right? I'd say any software that that is supportive, bring it in.

Unknown: 43:38

It's actually, it's a very smart one. Yeah, sure. Go ahead mark.

Mark Richards: 43:42

Well, it's that, that ability in zoom, to go and and break out for everybody, because that that, like any comments, large facilitation, you've got to have breakout groups. You've got got to have, you know, go to breakout, come back together. Go to breakout, come back together. And it's nice to be able to do a flow of that. But I find, you know, and sometimes you've got to use teams, and there are ways of achieving breakouts in in all of the tools. But if it takes you four minutes of chasing everybody around, going, come back, now, come back, now, come back now, then you can't send people to a short breakout because the transaction costs too high. So I think zoom to go on. But I think the other thing that I would say, and this was the one that really struck me, is you've got to use visual design, and let's say using Miro, because I'm just going to stay there for the moment. You've got to use visual design to help you understand what's happening in the breakouts, because it's the thing virtually. If you think about in a physical room, you send people to breakouts. You're at the front of the room, you can see the tables. You know, there's some table where everybody's sitting around, nobody's talking or they're talking about the weather. And you can go, I can go back. I can go and intervene. And you can actually sense the way in which you need to engage with each table. When you send people to virtual break. Hats. You've got no clue. I sent people to breakouts, so you know, first thing you need is, if you're using zoom or something else, an ability as a facilitator to visit them, but also do the visual design, so that whatever they're doing in their breakout, you can monitor it, and you can sense whether they're in flow. And I'm just gonna, I'm gonna share an example quickly. Let me just zoom into it on the screen, so if I go into screen share mode, this is an example of an activity from my product training and the activity, it's actually a simulation game, and there's a bunch of cards for events, right? And as a team, they have to play their way through. And you know, here's the first event, they respond to the first event that one's done. They go to the second event, they go to the third event. And then, as they're doing that, they're moving around things on the playboard in response to it. But I can very easily, if I've got, you know, six breakout groups playing it, I can go, how they going? Oh, this team's up to event number three, and the team next to them is up to event number six. Maybe I've got to go and unstick this tape, right? So being able to see things changing right and and at a glance, without having to zoom in and read writing. I love designing visuals that say you're going to move things, because as I see you move things, I can understand what's happening for you. And that's super powerful to know, because even when you drop in and out of a breakout, you visit a breakout, the whole group stops. They go, Oh, Mark's here, and you might just kill a really important conversation. You can't invisibly walk past it. And so setting yourself up to be able to go, I know how to sense a need, but also to how to leave space and not break flow. I think it's really important.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 47:03

That's that's really, really great. I think having this visualization, knowing what people are doing, it's really an important part. That's why, sometimes, as a moderator, you have the mouse cursors on the Miro board to see, are they moving at least what they are doing. And in my case, it's not only software. It's also having a co facilitator. And the job of the CO facilitator is just seeing what the people are doing. So while you are busy with your OBS stuff or sharing stuff and talking stuff, the other person is not writing emails or sending offers or whatever, attenders whatever is there to see. How are the people behaving? Are they okay? Are they eyes doing something strange? So are they still with us? Or if you're in exercises, looking what's going on on the Miro board, because I'm also with Mark. So the last year, I never went to breakout rooms when then it asked me to go, because I realized as soon as I go in, I'm the expert in the room, and they start asking me stuff without my need to be asked, so I need some kind of tricks to realize. Now have to go in. And I really, when I, when I, when I, when I went into breakout rooms, there's, oh, we just want to call you, yeah, thankful you're here. But I realized, because the movement stopped, the mouse pointer stopped, the progress stopped. And it's really something you have to master as a facilitator. One thing that I realized before, when we talked about about Microsoft, you can do still breakouts like in zoom, but it's really a horror, because only the one who created the part the appointment can do it, and it's usually impossible if you have external trainers. They were never the creator of the meeting, so they never have the rights to do breakouts. And that's why we externals love more zoom, because we are more in control. We give the host to them, and then they are able to do anything in Microsoft, yeah. Teams, you're just prisoner in the breakout rooms. You cannot do nothing. Stephan,

Stephan Neck: 48:59

yeah. And I think Niko, you just mentioned something that that has nothing to do with software. Pair work really helps any course, any training, even even if I'm doing on site stuff, I like working in pairs, or even having three people in the room. One is facilitation, one is kind of moderating, directing, and the other one is just observing, right? And it is huge. If software helps, or, as Mark has said, if your CICD pipeline is so good that you just can push buttons, there you go. That's a high level of maturity. But even then, I would suggest have have your wingman, your wing woman with you. It's a huge benefit.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 49:45

And with that, having a back channel only with your co hosts and helpers. So I usually have a Slack channel, which is, yeah, not not in zoom, not in that, in the in the environment you're training in a different environment, a back channel which you know, when it beeps, it's important, you have to look there, because. Your co pilot is saying something to you, or they want to reach out to you? Yeah,

Ali Hajou: 50:05

and there's, there's many alternatives in for people that are using Microsoft teams a lot, there are ways to add a tag to a person, or actually to add a tag to many people. So you'd have many people who are a scrum master, which means, if you type at the rate, and then your tag, which for me often, is SM Scrum Master, I can send a message to all Scrum Masters in one go. So in the top left corner of their screen, they would see that there is, all of a sudden, a new notification for all Scrum Masters coming from, coming from me, whenever things become a little bit more a little bit more analog. So we have a hybrid situation. I've also been working with sort of weird in between, tools such as coronagraph.io which is a free to use website, coronagraph.io, and it is a synchronized stopwatch and timer in certain environments. You know, you could, I could create a stopwatch. There it is, you can see that it's running, but if I scroll a little bit down, there is a view only link that I can share with a QR code, even there it is that I can share with whomever needs to see the timer. I see that Niko is already when if Niko, if Niko would have scanned that QR code, he would he would go to a website where he could see the timer. I've also been able to use these kind of things. I actually ordered these simple kitchen timers. This was a hybrid pi planning for the people that I was working with. It was the first time, and I just wanted to have everybody back for the scrum of scrums and for the posing and these things. They cost, I don't know, three bucks each or so, and I've used them so many times. So whenever we were all in a plenary session, we would just, you know, sit together and be like, alright, let's set the timer. And we would go into our breakouts and 321, we press start, and, you know, the timer would be would eventually go off whenever it would be time to join for a PO sync or for scrum of scrums. And they would take these kind of things with them, and, you know, put them at somewhere on the table. They would completely forget about them. But then all of a sudden it beeps, and they would know, oh yes, indeed, I I've been fully focused with my team, but the thing is beeping, so I need to go for a second. And there are so many of these small little things, you know, what you mentioned in in zoom, you have the ability to end the breakouts for all in teams. You have something similar, but then without a time or functionality. But it's, you know, it's, you would like to help the large audience to to nudge them. Let's say to the to the next step as well as possible. And if, indeed, if you use Miro or mural, or all of the other equivalents. Now, they have timers built in.

Mark Richards: 53:17

Everybody, well, everybody's proud of ignoring those. Thomas

Unknown: 53:21

Exactly. They completely ignored. But at least, you know, they're there,

Mark Richards: 53:25

like I used to, I used to use the confetti in mural, and it would like rain confetti all over the screen when the time I went off, and I'm like, surely people will pay attention to that. Nah.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 53:38

Nobody cares. So my trick, my trick was just make a big poster over this the area they are working and saying, Now, come back, please. I had to do this with Microsoft Teams. Lock this thing, and then they cannot work anymore. And they, after five minutes, they're back,

Ali Hajou: 53:55

forcing people to to get back to the main channel, talking about forcing lasting for today. We're also forced by company policies. We're also forced by legal implications. You know, we're we're using tools that are not made by the companies that they're used in, and therefore are not hosted at the companies that they're used in. But whenever we use these type of tools, such as Miro mural, Klaxoon, Microsoft, whiteboard, and so forth and so forth, these tools are going to contain quite some sensitive information, roadmap items. You know, it's brainstorming about technology IP. So I can imagine that you'd had some difficulties with that. So would you be able to share, yeah, sort of the ways that you've been able to, not so much circumvent, but at least comply with these security

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 54:57

issues. Yep, for me, the first. Is do a smoke test with the one who hires you. Just say, there's the length of Miro board, there's the link to Cahoot, whatever we are doing Mentimeter, and let's see if it works. And then, before the workshop starts, I have homework for them, like put an icon of you, an avatar view on this Miro board and put the pin on the map where you are from. And with that, you realize is everybody now capable of go there, because once the client unfortunately used her private laptop to go in and do the smoke test, and then we were starting the workshop, we realized, okay, it doesn't work from the from from the client side, from from the fireball side, and then I had to switch to something else. And it was happy I did it at least the weekend before. So smoke test in my case, and dry runs is something like that. And the other thing is having your own backup systems, like for Miro concept board, which is not nice, but it works the least. For zoom, you have something else, teams, WebEx, whatever, always having a backup tool, smoke test and homework, it's my solution.

Stephan Neck: 56:09

Thank you. Thank you. Just to add, just to add a few things. Like, most of the times people are using company laptops, desktops with a VPN, check that one could they really deactivate or not? And depending on that, it's, again, smoke testing. I like it because my plumber does it, and it's over 100 years old this practice. Let's do it. I would summarize it like designed for the smallest common denominator. So what I try to do on OBS or my tools, what does really work based on experience? It's 100% proof. And on top of that, like Niko said, Yeah, know your customer right? If you don't know the customer journey, if you don't know what the user needs, you're probably doomed to have to, in your opinion, with an inside out. You your best session set up, but it doesn't work.

Mark Richards: 57:09

Yeah, okay, thank you with with enough like experimentation, it's amazing what you can achieve almost anywhere, right? And I've seen people use the Microsoft Teams planner view as a poster capture and sorting tool. I've seen people use the digital whiteboard in Confluence to do their PR planning. You know, it is amazing what what you can do when you hunt hard enough and you have enough ingenuity and and it's worth the effort, right? Because you know, if it's if it's too hard, and you go, I'm just going to live without, then what you're probably doing is living without an amazing workshop or an amazing training event. But I think also you've got to recognize sometimes that if the constraints are too big, maybe you've got to walk away from the workshop I've had. For example, in Australian government, they blackballed any of the digital whiteboards. So if you wanted to do virtual workshops with any federal government agency, it was the Microsoft Teams whiteboard or nothing. And I said, I can't subject people to a two day safe training course where the only thing that they get other than PowerPoint is the Microsoft Teams whiteboard. I can't do it because I can't deliver a great training course indeed. So, you know, recognize and sometimes it's Well, perhaps I shrink my ambition, or I break a workshop up into multiple parts so that it's not multiple hours, but it's also sometimes you just gotta recognize when to walk away, because you can't achieve what you need to provide the right experience.

Ali Hajou: 58:51

Well, talking about walking away actually more sort of what we are going to have as a takeaway, because we're ending the show. I'd like to hear what your sort of takeaways are, after deep diving into the topic of software for remote, for facilitation, and I'm going to start with you. Niko, yeah,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 59:13

because software affects everybody. So in the hardware session, before we realize it affects you, so your screens, etc. But when you use software, it affects others. We had just heard the story from Mark, it affects others. So make sure that the software works for everybody, and be sure you're skilled in the software you're using, and sometimes do less, but safe.

Unknown: 59:35

Nice. Thank you. How about you? Stephan,

Stephan Neck: 59:38

well, I would say sweeten your remote facilitation with software, but leave a lasting taste.

Unknown: 59:45

Oh, nice. Nice mark.

Mark Richards: 59:47

I feel so sad. There's nothing pithy about mine. It's just It's surprising what's possible when you're laying in Yeah,

Ali Hajou: 59:55

yeah. And I think I'm going to conclude with exactly the. That diving fully into this topic will transform you into, first of all, someone that doesn't have any time anymore for anything else is completely focused on buying the right cable and putting the right configuration into certain tools like OBS, therefore losing a lot of time whatsoever. But you're turning yourself into a one person studio. And I don't know that's quite cool, alright?

Mark Richards: 1:00:27

Well, thank you. Ali, we it's time to de geek next week. Stephan has the reins, and we are into value stream identification challenges and approaches. So you know, we can promise you there will be no strange videos, cameras or anything else. But I'm sure that Ali, at least, we'll find a way to put something strange into a discussion about value stream identification. I'll

Unknown: 1:00:59

make some stupid jokes,

Stephan Neck: 1:01:04

looking forward to it until x way you.