Online Brainstorm

Conducting a brainstorm can be done in many, many ways. This version I used for a session with limited time and all participants joining online. The goal was to figure out actions and next steps on how to improve a large program that was running. The topics that needed improvement were collected and defined prior to the meeting. The brainstorm setup needed to facilitate self-reliance for a great part and quickly guide the group to a broad-based and limited set of next steps and / or actions.

Prerequisites

- Pre-determined and defined topics.

- Determine duration of brainstorm rounds.

- Online meeting set up with break-out rooms (set the groups per break-out room if applicable).

Brainstorm

- Send participants to their break-out rooms.

- Start round 1, the schedule informs each group what topic to start with.

- Brainstorm for the duration set by the facilitator, use Miro timer.

- If timer sounds, groups move to the next topic (2nd row).

- Start round 2, take note of input of the previous group and add new input.

- Repeat this until all topics have been addressed and enough input is gathered.

- Make sure all participants rejoin the plenary session.

- Dot voting per topic: participants divide their votes, voting for the input they like best.

- Input with most votes is transferred to the area underneath (best idea or top 2 or top 3).

- Per topic conduct a round of brainstorming actions and/or next steps. This can be done plenary, with use of the breakout rooms or by assigning topics to groups.