What are some of the best tips for engaging participants in online meetings?

Some thoughts on how we usually plan meetings + keep them engaging: 1. Don't make them too long, try to keep meetings at 30 minutes, 45 minutes max if really needed. 2. Check-in questions for meetings throughout can be great, make sure to follow up on these questions and engage with people throughout. 3. Run polls or other engaging activities throughout the meeting. This can be used as an ice-breaker or for meeting-related activities. 4. Make sure that everyone present in the meeting actually needs to be there. People will be less engaged if they don't have much input to provide. 5. Assign someone to lead the meeting. Less chaos will allow for a better flow and a more organized back-and-forth between team members. 6. Set up a clear meeting agenda and share it in advance. People can be more engaged if you give them time to prepare questions or insights. Curious to hear your thoughts on these. :)

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Could depend on when the meeting takes place as well. Beginning of the week, start by asking how the weekend went, if they did anything interesting. Could setup a channel where they share weekend photos etc. Video sharing is something that you can consider, although not everyone would be comfortable with it.

To begin with, keep the video on. It adds a human touch to the otherwise blank screen. Icebreakers or water cooler topics are always a good start to have everyone participate. Once they've participated and contributed, you'd find it easier to keep the engagement going. I think I have observed these two points so far. Hope this helps!

Each month we hold an online meeting with the team members. As a small ice breaker, those meetings always start with a game in which all the participants have to turn off their cameras until the time someone calls out their name. In that moment, they have to turn it on and say a few things about themselves and then call out another participant whilst holding their camera 'on', so the others can see they've been called out. Each participant will be called out, sooner or later ;). We believe in this way we'll promote bigger transparency and team-connectivity. Also, what I've noticed is that many get less uneasy to engage in the conversation with the others this way.

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