Hello Friends,

Greetings from Barcelona, Spain ☀️

🙌Many thanks for reading The Quest, your weekly round-up of tips and insights to help you design and lead exceptional virtual sessions that your group members will love.❤️

Let's dive right in!

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💬As a facilitator how worried should you be about AI?

A lot of people are talking about how AI will revolutionize, well, just about everything.

But what about facilitation?

I turned to ChatGPT. Surely it (they?) will have the answer.

I typed, "Explain how AI will impact the facilitation of online meetings."

In a matter of seconds, it spat out 8 areas. I read through the list:

1/ Meeting scheduling. Great.

2/ Meeting transcription. Amazing.

3/ Meeting analytics. Super helpful.

4/ Meeting summarization. Yay!

5/ Virtual assistants. For real?

6/ Language translation. A game-changer.

7/ Virtual reality meetings. Really?

8/ Facilitation of breakout sessions. What??

Hold on a second ChatGPT. Are you saying that AI will replace online facilitators?

I typed, "Will AI-powered facilitators replace human facilitators?"

ChatGPT weighed in.

"While AI can help with many aspects of facilitation, there are tasks that require human judgment, creativity, and emotional intelligence. Human facilitators can provide insight and perspective that AI-powered facilitators may not have."

ChatGPT's conclusion?

"AI-powered facilitators can complement human facilitators, helping to automate certain tasks and provide data-driven insights, but it's unlikely that they will replace human facilitators entirely."

So there is no need to worry about AI replacing human facilitators. But understanding how AI is impacting facilitation will help you use it to give your groups the best possible experience.

How can AI help you facilitate even better virtual sessions?

That's our quest for this week🔎

👉Meet Learning Legendario's Zoltar

👉5 AI-powered platforms I'm checking out

👉Free LinkedIn Event - AI in Facilitation January 27

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🔮Meet Learning Legendario's Zoltar

Imagine being able to ask any facilitation question and get an answer straight away.

Meet Zoltar.

Zoltar is the creation of Madrid-based facilitator Juan Daniel Sobrado (and Quest reader hi Juanda 👋).

Juanda is a Communications Engineer who sells robots by day. In his spare time, he runs Learning Legendario, a Spanish-language virtual facilitation company dedicated to helping people design and run more engaging online experiences.

Zoltar is Juanda's experiment in applying AI to the world of learning by answering questions about facilitation. You can ask Zoltar any question and he'll respond immediately.

OK, Zoltar...

"What does a facilitator do?"

"How do you handle participants who talk too much?"

"How do you handle awkward silences?"

I was impressed with the speed and quality of Zoltar's responses.

Ask Zoltar your questions 👉 here.

Check out Juanda's Learning Legendario website full of Spanish language facilitation resources 👉here.

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💻Five AI-Powered Facilitation Platforms I'm Checking Out

I am in the very early stages of experimenting with AI-powered platforms. I'm looking for ways to automate things like tracking engagement, monitoring the chat, transcription, and summarization.

Here are 5 AI-powered platforms that I'm checking out👇

1/ StreamAlive

If you've been reading the Quest over the past few months, you'll have heard me sing the praises of StreamAlive and how it plans to revolutionize online engagement. It's a new AI-powered tool that allows you to run interactive maps, polls, and word clouds. It scans for questions in the chat. It also has an Analytics feature so you can track engagement throughout the session. The best part is that it is integrated right into the chat. I got so excited about StreamAlive I became a beta tester. And I was thrilled to be featured in their November Showcase.

Check it out 👉here.

2/ Butter​

I was introduced to Butter a couple of years ago through facilitator Scott Mayer (and Quest Reader hi Scott👋). I'm a big fan of Butter's blog and facilitation resources. And a few months ago I was lucky to find myself in a breakout group with Butter's dynamite Head of Community Ana Maria Dorgo. I like how they've built-in engagement tools, the built-in session planner, and breakouts on the platform. I'm planning to explore Butter more in 2023.

Check it out 👉 here.

3/ Gatheround ​

Can software create community and engagement? That's the question I asked when I first came across Gatheround (back when it was called Icebreaker). To my surprise, it worked pretty well. With their free version, you can access ready-to-go session templates and run a live session for up to 20 participants.

Check it out 👉 here.

4/ Howspace

An AI-powered team collaboration tool. I haven't used Howspace, but I'm curious to know more about their interactive Super Chat, AI Discussion Summaries, Theme clustering, and Sentiment Analysis.

Check it out 👉here.

5/ Zoom​

Zoom has already added AI-powered features like real-time live translation and transcription with support for 12 languages, and Smart Gallery to create individual video feeds of in-room participants for a seamless hybrid meeting experience. Zoom is also working on developing "conversational intelligence". I have yet to use any of these features. But I'll be keeping an eye on how they can help level up my virtual facilitation this year. Read more in the Zoom blog article 4 predictions for work in 2023.

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📅 LinkedIn Event: AI in Facilitation January 27

A free live LinkedIn event to explore how AI is impacting facilitation organized by UX Facilitation Founder Marie Dubost (and Quest reader hi Marie👋) with Limelights Founder and facilitator Joost de Leij .

Register 👉 here.

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💌Thanks for reading The Quest

I always love hearing your feedback and suggestions. Just hit reply to share your thoughts and ideas.

Visit my website for ways we can work together 👉 here.

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Creatively yours,

P.S. You can check out last week's edition 🌟How to Set Up Your Breakout Groups for Success and all previous editions of The Quest 👉 here.