Tatiana Glad is a partner in Engage! Interact (http://www.engage.nu/), an organization dedicated to facilitate strategic conversations. Tatiana is an experienced facilitator who has designed multiple successful interactive events and workshops. She is in charge of the Coaching service that GK3 is offering session leads, speakers and organizers to build skills on planning and structuring interactive sessions.

Interview summary:

About the GK3 Support Design service.

The GK3 Coaching service is available to session moderators, panel organizers and speakers, basically anyone who is hosting a panel or workshop at GK3. We have modelled ourselves as a Helpdesk of experienced coaches and facilitators to be available to you as moderators or session designers, we've available by phone or Skype to help you design your panel or workshop. It is an opportunity for you to get the support you need to implement your ideas, if you need to explore ideas or try something quite different, if you need coaching in methodologies you want to try. We're people who can give you some ideas, guidance or resources in specific skills to be a better workshop moderator, leader or speakers. You can build some skills, get some feedback, run something by someone who is experience in working with groups. We are trying to provide coaching in different languages to reflect the audience and the panellists. You can go to the website (http://www.gk3onlineinteractions.net/supportdesign) and fill up a simple web form with different options that are not limited but are available, we will contact you and arrange a phone call with a coach, we can pair you up with what's available or we can find resources according to your needs.

About Interactive sessions in GK3.

Part of the challenge of GK3 is that is a global community working in many parts of the world and this is an opportunity to create something alive, not only "downloading" information but discovering new knowledge between us. I hope that we involve participants in a conversation that is engaging and alive and stimulating so that when we go home we have a sense of bringing back something and not experiencing something static, but something that we can live beyond the borders of what GK3 is. For me interactive is also emergent and generative, allowing new learning to come up. Having a live space where ideas can be captured live and as they come out, be built upon and allowed to grow. Sometimes conversations in the hallway have a lot of energy, how can we bring that energy to the sessions? For me is about communications and all of us being active learners and teachers no matter what role we have in a conference. Structuring conversations in a way that allow ideas to flourish and things to emerge and connections to be made.

Elements of successful sessions

There has to be four main elements for a successful space, panel or workshop.
First, a sense of purpose and focus. Being clear on what the intent is and what is the purpose of connecting to the audience, how does the session serves the audience.
Second is about pacing, a sense of timing, rhythm and responsiveness. A session tat has a sense of life, of creativity throughout the design. The pacing is a lot about timing and how information is flowing and how it is building through the time of the session.
The third element is provocation: does it raises new questions, does it stimulate new thinking? Just as you leave the session the energy and electricity of the sessions spill into the hallways.
The fourth is about preparedness, have a sense of what the roles are, what have we designed, what is the intent, what are the materials. What happens if something emerges? This is the work that is done beforehand to make it relevant to the audience.

A friend told me this quote that sums up what we can expect in GK3: the more thought that goes into the questions, the more interactive the conversations. I like to think of this online discussion and the Helpdesk as an invitation to start thinking about the questions behind the panels, how do we open the space to new conversations.