Leveraging the power of in-person gathering
I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of in-person gathering on the professional end as well. After a long summer vacation, this Fall has been a period of reconvening in person.
Last month, we had an in-person kick off for a DC School Behavioral Health Consortium that drove home the energy and sense of community that can come simply from sitting around the same table. I also loved the icebreaker the meeting conveners used to set the stage for our time together - they shared a collage of different images representing collaboration and asked each person, as we went around the room for introductions, to share which image resonated most with them and why. What a great way to orient the group to the reason we had come together and unearth some key distinctions and nuances in how each person at the table might approach this work. We’ve gotten used to “setting the stage” activities in virtual spaces, but they are just as valuable in in-person gatherings.
Last week, we had our second annual set of Ignite presentations and data sensemaking sessions for our work (in partnership with the Center for Health and Healthcare in Schools at GW) as the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning partner for an antiracist, whole child development initiative in DC schools. Although this kind of sharing of our work and making sense of data visuals could, technically speaking, be done virtually, there is something about the power of being seated in a circle and lending our full attention to the discussion at hand that is hard to recreate on Zoom. There is also perhaps something even more powerful about the “sideline” conversations that occur between partner organizations during an in-person gathering, especially one that includes time to share meals together and catch up informally, as we did on both days of this convening. One of our partners emailed us after the event, “I wanted to thank you all for such an impactful convening this week. It was really inspiring to be around such a thoughtful group of educators/advocates and to be able to more deeply connect the dots across the entire project. I was even able to leave with immediate steps to further collaborate with [two of the other partner organizations on particular projects].” This is exactly what we hope can arise from bringing people together.
And finally, later this week, we are kicking off our partnership with the Perry County Health Coalition in Pennsylvania with an in-person convening of the coalition - the first time they’ll be gathering in person since 2019! So we’re trying to be thoughtful about how we make this brief time together as meaningful as possible. One thing we did is send around a survey and conduct a few interviews several weeks in advance of the meeting. We’ll be sharing our findings from the survey and interviews at the meeting as a launchpad for further discussion - this approach allows us to get the more obvious and consensus-y ideas shared quickly, leaving more of our precious in-person time to navigate the areas where there is complexity, uncertainty, or disagreement.
None of this is to say there is not unique power in virtual gathering - here at PoP Health, we love facilitating virtual convenings and have lots of tips and tools to make that time meaningful, engaging, and productive.
It’s just that this past month in particular, we’ve also been thinking a lot about the power of in-person gathering and how we can leverage that.
Reader, curious to hear your thoughts - in your experience, what’s the unique value-add of gathering in person? And how can we best leverage the power of those (sometimes rare) opportunities to be together in the same physical space? Drop me a note!
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