Business Moderation: the Time Frame – Tips for Successful Moderation Design

Hello dear friends! By now you have come relatively far already with designing your business moderation. You have dealt with the topic, the participants as well as the objectives / non objectives and results of your workshops. Now we will be talking even more in-depth about moderation design, going more in the direction of detailed planning and we ask ourselves the following question:

4. “What is my time frame?”

First you have to think about how much time you have in total for your workshop / business moderation and when it is the best time to start and end your workshop. Your participants may have longer travel times – you should take this into account when you are preparing your schedule.

Also, it is important to plan a “warming-up” phase – the length of this phase depends on the duration of your business moderation and serves to see if your participants already know each other or have to “warm” up to one another first. This so-called “forming phase” can take a little time – give your participants time to get to know one another. You can support this process with the appropriate methods (we will talk more about potential “openers” and “closers” and other methods for your workshop in one of the next articles!).

If you (have to) start with an opening presentation, this should take no more than 20 minutes, so your listeners will not get overwhelmed by a frontal programme right at the start and you will lose them.

Finally, it is also important to take into account sufficient breaks. After about 1.5 hours your participants will need a short breather.

Business moderation: Keep the timeframe in mind!

You should enter the result of your thoughts into an excel table. Using simple formula’s you can easily calculate the time frame and the duration of the individual blocks as well as the total. The table can also serve as a basis for all further process steps.

Template_Moderation_Design_English

But this detailed version is just for you as moderator. Don’t distribute that to your audience! This would kill your flexibility within your workshops. Go with the flow and the current needs of your participants and keep an eye on your aims. For participants it is sufficient to get a rough agenda, as time-keeping is YOUR job and not the job of participants!

Have you put enough thought into the time you have available? Then you are ready for the next important question! Stay tuned …