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Building a remote culture that enables your team is no easy feat. If you succeed you’ll unlock the agency and autonomy that comes with a well managed remote operation. If you don’t succeed you end up burning out from bad habits.

In this biweekly podcast you'll hear, from both Alix and guests, all about remote teamwork from a zillion different angles. It'll be focused on fresh perspectives, and always include suggestions for you to put new practices into place.

Let us know what you think, and hope you enjoy!

Hosted by Alix Dunn

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Episode 8 | Making magic and momentum in virtual events with Sarah Allen

E08
/
June 14, 2023

How do you move an event focused on building community into the virtual world without losing the magic?

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about the episode

When in-person conferences became impossible in 2020, Mozilla’s Sarah Allen and her team had to move their renowned annual convening MozFest online. But how do you move an event focused on building community into the virtual world without losing the magic?

In this episode, Alix sits down with Sarah to talk about Mozilla Festival (aka MozFest)’s shift to virtual, how the new format changed her approach to the event, and how to create meaningful connection and community remotely.

Find Sarah and say hello here.

*This interview was originally recorded as part of the 2022 Remote Culture Intensive, a course for remote teams to rebuild their culture, together.

our key takeaways

1. Be a speaker box, not an echo chamber

For Mozilla, MozFest is a moment to survey their community, hear new perspectives, and bring learnings back into the organisation. But this can’t happen if only staff and existing community members show up. Big convenings are an important moment to hear new perspectives and feel new energy.

Think about how your staff all-hands or external conference can be a platform for evolving conversations rather than the same conversation over and over again. Sarah and her team ask themselves who might be missing from MozFest and are intentional about inviting and spotlighting new participants with new perspectives and new energy.

2. Ask participants what they want

It might seem like a no-brainer. We assume we already know what people want or need, or that we have to guess. Sarah not only asks what participants want from the festival but also takes it a step further: her team invites community members to co-design every element of MozFest.

But even if you’re not ready to manage this type of federated design, you can still find ways to involve participants through surveys or asking participants to take on different facilitation elements. Even small steps can lead to huge wins for design and engagement.

3. Build a pathway, not just a meeting

During in-person events, the venue contains participants. There’s a registration desk, coffee lines, hallway chatter. But in remote events, you have to build the container for participants; otherwise, they’ll drop in for an hour session and then head back to their inboxes or their next meeting, never really stepping into a different mental space that opens up possibilities.

As you plan your own remote convenings, think about the participant journey before, during, and after the event to build and sustain momentum.

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Get your free Remote Ready starter kit.

Discover the 5 states of remote (and which one you’re in)

Find out the #1 dynamic that holds teams back

Get a sneak peek of our signature course

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.