Stakeholder Engagement and Large Group Facilitation
Dialogue in a small group of people is a critical process for exploring the power of group intelligence, and we are certainly passionate advocates of this approach to engaging groups. But we also believe that an organization’s or community’s problems sometime require the engagement of more diverse voices than can be in one small group. For many years, we have refined a number ways to use audience polling technology in order to make the many benefits of dialogue available at a larger scale, so that each person can feel truly heard, and so that some coherent conclusion emerges from the interplay of diverse perspectives in a large group of people.
We have mastered multiple approaches for such meetings, some of which we have pioneered. Whether the particular situation calls for a meeting with several dozen people or several hundred, we bring to bear our experience in many high-profile events that involved the recruitment, design, and facilitation of hundreds or thousands of people.
Some past examples of events we have designed, managed, and/or facilitated;
- A town hall meeting for President Bill Clinton involving 60 participants, 800 live observers, and a national television audience
- A 90 minute plenary sessions at the Council on Foundations where grantmakers used table dialogue to explore different definitions of community engagement and also used technology to generate collective conclusions.
- An day-long meeting for a national union involving 4,000 participants in dialogue
- Three meetings over four days on public education each involving 250 people in geographically disparate parts of Omaha, Nebraska
- A five-city satellite-linked meeting involving 2,700 participants on rebuilding priorities for New Orleans (Click here to see video highlights)