Polling in hybrids

This is not a method, it covers a simple three-step process to adapt existing methods of voting, polling and prioritizing to hybrid environments, in which participants are joining both online and in-person. 

Setting the scene - You have arrived at a list of concepts, ideas or next steps and need the whole group to vote on them. As facilitator, you are aiming to get every voice included and for a similar experience for all attendees, but some are online and some are in-person! 

How to get there

(1) Make the options visible to all

Collect all available options in the form that will be most easy to visualize for all participants. This is likely to be an online whiteboard for the remote attendees, and a projection of the same whiteboard for those attending in person. Insofar as possible, avoid duplicating the boards (e.g. by having an online whiteboard AND a flipchart) because this makes it more likely for there to be mistakes and discrepancies between the two. 

(2) Number the options (option 1, 2, 3.. or A, B,C...). This is in order to simplify setting up the next step.

(3) Make it easy to vote via smartphone

Rather than set up dot-voting or similar systems on a whiteboard, create a poll on a tool that is easy to use from phones (e.g. Mentimeter) and share the link. This is because while access to a whiteboard might be a given for all remote participants, if may be more complicated to get everyone who is in-person joining individually from their own device. And you need them to join individually for voting! 

If a participant in the room does not have any device, you can simply have them vote from one of your computers', or from another participant's. 

Another way around this:

Have each cohort vote separately, then merge - only attempt this if you have a large enough facilitation team as it can easily get complicated, especially with large numbers! Two tips if you are going down this route:

(1) Create a back-channel (e.g. a separate GoogleDoc) for your team to key in their results; (2) Put a break in the schedule while you and the team go over results before announcing the final outcome!