From communication to the comfort of participants, an informal working session follows certain rules …
1 / Prioritize comfort above all
Comfortable seats with different seat heights, calm environment, alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks, comfort must come first during these small meetings where the atmosphere must be friendly and informal.
2 / Adapt your Fireside Chat to the season
In the summer, this “fireside chat” will take place outside. Surprise your guests! At the foot of an oak tree, in a patch of greenery, by a lake, the cozyness of a discussion can also take place outside. And your participants will benefit from all of nature’s proven health and morale benefits.
3 / Communicate upstream
Communicating on the themes is essential to make people want to go there. Provide a short description of each workshop if there are several, with the name of the speaker, etc.
4 / Be demanding with the speakers
They must respect the duration, scope the subject, be the driving force in the discussion. Provide a moderator if your speaker is familiar with his/her subject but is not necessarily used to this type of session.
5 / Anticipate the number of seats
In case of simultaneous Fireside Chats with a large number of participants, offer the same number of seats as the actual number of participants. Ex: 10 groups of 10 people for a group of 100 people in total. This will avoid having overcrowded animations and other empty ones.
6 / Keep an eye on time
20 minutes? 30 minutes? 45 minutes? 1 hour? All these durations are interesting but must be defined beforehand, and not to be exceeded. We are often more efficient when we are timeboxed.