⚒️ The Quest #70 - 10 Digital Tools to Try and streamAlive

Greetings from Barcelona ☀️

🙌Many thanks for reading The Quest.

If you are joining for the first time, welcome to our deep dive into facilitation, learning, and how to live a creative life.

Let’s jump right in!

⚒️Keeping up to speed with new digital tools is one of my biggest struggles as a virtual facilitator.

I am not always up-to-date with the latest Zoom features. I have a hard time keeping up with Mentimeter updates. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what is possible with Miro.

I tend to stick with a few go-to tools that I feel comfortable with.

The same Zoom poll. An occasional Mentimeter word cloud. And if I’m really feeling adventurous, I’ll launch a question in Sli.do.

There is a cost to staying in my comfort zone.

I have not been advancing in my facilitation in the ways that I would like to. And I am not using tools that could give my participants the best possible experience.

I realized that I had a flawed mindset.

I have never seen myself as especially tech-savvy. Especially compared with other online creators I know. (Yes I’m looking at you Karaminder😉). This mindset was fast becoming the perfect excuse to shy away from doing the work I needed to do to grow my online facilitation.

If I wanted to grow I needed to ditch that limiting belief.

So I started experimenting with more tools. And it’s given me a bunch of new ideas for my virtual sessions. It motivated me to learn more.

Online tools can help you connect with your participants and boost engagement.

🤔How can you expand your repertoire of new digital tools?

That’s our Quest for this week🔎

👉How StreamAlive plans to revolutionize online engagement

👉10 Digital Tools Worth Checking Out

Plus

👉Khe Hy’s How to Prioritize when everything is urgent

🖥️ How StreamAlive Plans To Revolutionize Online Engagement

No sooner than I had ditched my “I’m not tech-savvy” mindset, I got a message from friend and tech entrepreneur (author, comedian, and rapper) Lux Narayan asking me if I would like to be a beta tester for his new online engagement tool called streamAlive. I said yes😅.

streamAlive is designed to pump up online engagement, especially for large virtual groups. In the current version, streamAlive allows you to run maps, polls, and word clouds.

Sure, you can do that with other tools like Mentimeter and Sli.do. The big leap forward with StreamAlive is that it takes the information directly from the chat.

✔️Your participants don’t have to click on any links or go to any websites

✔️And you don’t have to rely on being able to speed read the answers from the chat.

Here are two examples:

Real-time maps bring your audience’s locations to life as they enter them into the chat.
Word clouds that reflect your audience’s thoughts as they enter words into the chat like this👇

streamAlive is working on new features like tracking questions, chat cadence, and most engaged audience members. Apply to get early access 👉 here. Watch this space!

💡10 Digital Tools to Try (with free versions)

Over the last several months, with a lot of trial and error, I’ve managed to expand my virtual facilitation tool repertoire.

Here are 10 digital tools with free versions that are worth checking out👇

1/ MIRO Collaborative interactive whiteboard with excellent facilitation templates.

2/ MURAL Collaborative interactive whiteboard – similar to Miro.

3/ GOOGLE JAMBOARD Collaborative interactive whiteboard – fewer features than Mural and Miro.

4/ MENTIMETER Interactive tools like polls, quizzes, word clouds, and Q&A.

5/ SLI.DO Interactive tools – similar to Mentimeter.

6/ PADLET Digital notice board for images, links, and videos.

7/ MMHMM Creative video tool for teaching and presentations.

8/ ZOOM ANNOTATE A tool in Zoom that allows you and participants to annotate on a shared screen.

9/ ZOOM POLLS A tool in Zoom for running polls that can be set up in advance.

10/ ZOOM REACTIONS A tool in Zoom for nonverbal reactions and feedback.

What are your favorite digital facilitation tools?

💡Khe Hy’s How to Prioritize (when everything is a priority)

I have always struggled with prioritizing tasks. It means that I often feel overwhelmed. And that’s when I get stuck. The problem is that most productivity advice that I read goes in one ear and out the other.

That’s why I was so happy to find some fresh tips in Khe Hy’s article on How to Prioritize.

Read the article 👉 here.

I often find fresh productivity gems like these in Khe’s free newsletter RadReads 👉here.