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Facilitation Tips From The Pros: Awesome Group Energiser & Tag Knee Tag
Facilitation Tips From The Pros: Awesome Group Energiser & Tag Knee Tag
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Awesome Group Energiser & Tag Knee Tag
Emotional Learning
Theme song
1. :
Establish a theme/anthem and use it to anchor all the major points in the event
agenda, e.g. prior to friday pitches, mentor session kickoff, sunday presentations. Even after
people are tired towards the end of the event they’ll start singing along and it’ll get them
switched on.
Story telling
2. : the “Why are we here slide” is a great opportunity for the facilitator to share
their personal story with participants. This will create a strong emotional connection with the
audience and is a great way to prime the audience to consider the community aspect of the
weekend alongside their own idea/team/startup.
Intellectual Learning
1. Skill dump: everybody can list down their skills on a large whiteboard (e.g. law, web dev,
etc.) and where they can be found around the room/space. This way other participants can
reach out during the weekend for questions and advice.
2. Office spaces: create office spaces for participants with specific skills to hold a workshop on
topics that lots of teams will need. E.g. how to setup a quick landing page website, or use the
Business Model Canvas. This can save other teams lots of team trying to figure things out for
themselves.
Physical Learning
Presentation surprises
1. : a surprise/queue (e.g. fireballs showing up in a presentation) can be
introduced at the beginning that calls for a special action from the audience (e.g. jump up and
cheer for your startup) right throughout the weekend. This gets people moving and is similar to
the “power pose” in that it gets people in a positive and energised state.
Order by / group by animal size:
2. This technique involves having people pick an animal, then
line up according to the size of the animal but only by acting out the animal and without talking.
This gets people moving, laughing and interacting in memorable ways which helps in
icebreaking and getting to know each other.
Social Learning
Common and unique
1. : Get people into groups and ask them to identify things that they have in
common and two things that are unique about each other.
2. Interactive seating design: Before the event consider how to design the rooms and spaces
where people congregate to encourage interaction. For instance, try switching the direction that
a row of chairs are set to get people facing each other.
Make sure you know a few jokes to fill up space when tech gremlins attack
Try to meet everyone in the room and encourage participants to do the same!
How to get your Startup Weekend venue cleaned up after your event in 7 minutes! Big Comfy
Couch style. Works at every event!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFw9KxKYmU
For the Sunday PPT, it's helpful to have slides on opportunities for participants to get involved in
leadership opportunities within their startup community curate a Startupdigest, organize the
next Startup Weekend, write for the UP Global blog, join our local entrepreneurial meetup
group.
Remember that half of your audience is nervous, not paying attention to you, and just waiting to
get their pitch over and done with. Don't drag it out any longer than necessary.
Technique of showing photos of the weekend on the Sunday (with added humour) gives people
all the warm and fuzzy feelings that give them inspiration to continue down the path of
entrepreneurship. Plus reviewing what people have learned also helps them realize how much
they have gained in such a short time. Solid.
Preevent
● Remind the organisers that SW doesn’t do cash prizes
● Ask lead organisers to complete the organisers
,
sponsors and prizes slides in
advance. They know the people/companies and are less likely to make mistakes.
● Mentors/Coaches and judges:
○ Get them to the venue ahead of time 1hr ahead to accommodate lateness and
for “briefing”. Offer them drinks and somewhere to socialise if they’re early.
○ Get a specific bio that describes what areas they will mentor (will often differ from
work experience on LinkedIn).
○ Really spend time on Skype >1 week before to decide how to run the mentors.
● Get an idea if the venue is one large/open space or whether there’s separate rooms etc.
Friday
● Print a running sheet!
● Before pitches start on Friday, showing or demonstrating examples of what a "good" and
"bad" pitch looks like. Do this before playing “half baked”.
● If space/time is tight, a word generator can be used to create Half Baked ideas:
○ http://www.quarterroasted.co/
● Meet and brief any speakers so you know who they are and can give a warm intro
● Remind teams to share contact details with each other including phone numbers
● Ask the audience to pitch in and keep the place clean and try not to be wasteful with the
food and drinks.
● Don’t play any games that don’t add value.
Saturday
● Spend 510 minutes briefing the coaches/mentors
● Get printouts for coaching/mentors signup out early
● Give teams and coaches enough breaks
● Plan for a “team update/checkpoint” midmorning or before lunch.
Sunday
● Print a running sheet!
● Test with two microphones
● Meet and brief any speakers so you know who they are and can give a warm intro.
● Brief the judges and focus them on the criteria and the process the teams have gone
through rather than who’s got the best idea, market potential etc.
● If twitter activity is high, have a volunteer organiser moderate twitter for questions from
the audience during the presentations
● Put more emphasis on judges giving feedback to the startups in addition to asking
probing questions.
● Let the judges offer some tips / advice to the winning teams when prizes are announced.
● Let the teams say a few words if they like.