Moderation and Large Group Formats
Panel Discussions, Workshops for Experts, Open Space, Future-Search Conferences
You are looking for a professional and lively presentation of you event? We present and structure your contents, introduce speakers, ask questions, summarize and wrap discussions up.
You want to engage a large group to develop new ideas? We offer special formats for large groups like Future Search Conferences or Open Space: Every participant will be invited to contribute. As hosts we will ensure a dynamic exchange between plenary and small groups, we will help to document your outcomes and your plans for first specific steps for implementation.
1. Classic Moderation and Panel Discussions
We present large-scale events with over 100 participants. We have a substantive amount of experience as presenters, and we will closely coordinate all details with you before the conference or event (either in face-to-face meetings or via online meeting tools) to ensure smooth proceedings. We take a lot of time beforehand to prepare for the event’s topics, to support you in the conceptual phase and to really understand the goals you pursue with the conference. We can host events employing different languages (German, English or Dutch).
As moderators of expert workshops or negotiations with a limited number of persons at the table we will take care to ensure that all participants have the opportunity to intervene. We will collect the results achieved during these events for you, and summarize the actions participants define as way forward. We enable you to proceed towards your goals, and our experience helps us to get even difficult or stagnant negotiations back on track.
From Our Practical Experience
Why do we need Large Group Formats?
Experience shows that in meetings involving more than thirty participants, not everyone will have a chance anymore to make their voice heard and make their points. However, to ensure precisely that everyone has an opportunity to raise their issues, there are special formats the goal of which is to delve into the whole potential of all participants.
By involving all participants, the methods we employ guarantee to create significant dynamics, a joy of thinking and conceptualizing solutions together as well as a high degree of mutual reliability as concerns implementation. A key condition, however, is to ensure that beforehand representatives of all stakholder groups are involved, so that really all perspectives can be included in the process.
2. Large Group Formats
Future-Search Conferences
This format will help you to develop new goals for your oganization or your team engaging everyone concerned. In the course of the Conference we will repeatedly work in smaller groups, too, thereby giving everyone the opportunity to get involved. We help you find ways to define goals that everyone develops ownership for.
Open Space
In Open Space the first step ist to define a major over-arching issue. In a second step smaller groups work on those aspects of the issue that are relevant for their work. Participants propose themselves, what aspect of the principal issue they want to focus on. Changing between groups is not just permitted, but is even very welcome. Regularly, Open space mobilizes a high degree of creativity and motivation to proceed immediately towards implementation.
Appreciative Inquiry
Organizations tend to develop towards the direction they focus their attention on. Therefore this approach’s objective ist o find the hidden, already existing „jewels“ to increase their number by asking the following questions: What has worked well in the past? Where have we been really successful? What factors played a decisive role for these successes? We aim at making sure all participants will have a chance to get involved in this inquiry.
4. References (selection)
Hosting of the German-Dutch Economic Forum, Chamber of Industry and Commerce of the Central Lower-Rhine Region, Mönchengladbach, Germany: 500 participants, panel discussions with Ministers and City Councellors.
NeBeDeAG Pol (trilateral Dutch-Belgian-German working group for police cooperation): Key note speech and hosting of a conference at the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary
INTERREG Stakeholder conferences, Emmen and Kalkar, Germany: moderation, input, presentation of results; 200 pasrticipants at each of both conferences in Emmen and Kalkar
Aachen Region, Germany: Kick-off conference of the Habitation Monitor Euregio Maas Rhein (online/zoom), 120 participants with simultanious translation, virtual panel discussion via Spotlight
Dutch Ministry for Justice and Security: Presentation of a two-day conference on civil protection/disaster control featuring the chairpersons of the security regions, Hengelo, Netherlands, eighty participants
North Rhine-Westphalia and Dutch Province of Gelderland: Conceptual preparation and presentation of a three-day conference hosted by the Training Academy of North Rhine Westphalia for managerial level staff of both regional governments, Arnheim, Netherlands, 100 participants
Moderation of negotiations lasting several months between German and Dutch representatives regarding railroad links and electrification in the border region, Euregio Gronau, Germany, ten to fifteen participants