Like every other sector, public engagement planning and facilitation had to find a way to carry on during the pandemic. That meant changing how we engaged with stakeholders. In a profession heavily dependent on in-person interaction and dialogue, practitioners had to find other ways to support meaningful engagement. So, now that we are starting to see a post-pandemic world opening up, will public engagement practices go back to “normal”? I hope not.
How we used to do public engagement
Pre-pandemic, public engagement professionals primarily employed two modalities to facilitate stakeholder dialogue and input on issues and decision-making:
In-person meetings and interactions
Community gatherings, meetings, or workshops
Community outreach (e.g. public info kiosks at a park or on the street)
Asynchronous online input
Surveys and polls
Discussion boards
Social media
For the most part, we didn’t engage with people in real-time online. Perhaps we’d use a Twitter chat during a live event to gather input from those who weren’t in the room, but that was not routine.
Public engagement during pandemic lockdowns
When the reality of the pandemic situation settled upon us back in March 2020, facilitators instinctively reached out to the online platforms we were familiar with (e.g. MetroQuest, Engagement HQ). But, when it became clear that this health crisis was not going to resolve within a few months, a bit of panic settled in. How would we bridge the gap between surveys and other online input and our inability to host in-person sessions?
Personally, when we entered lockdown, I was nearing the end of facilitating a task force developing a subregional municipal plan. We had been involved in deep consensus-level decision-making for the past nine months. Moving the discussion to an online survey was simply not an option. My client looked to me for a possible solution.
We moved the sessions to Zoom, which today seems anything but revolutionary, but at the time, we regarded online platforms such as GoToMeeting or Microsoft Teams as tools for team meetings, not large-scale public engagement. Zoom polls replaced paper-based consensus-building tools. We sorted out break-out rooms.
Fast forward a few months, Covid cases declined and lockdown restrictions eased. We could now hold gatherings with limited numbers. A northern community retained Dialogue Partners to facilitate stakeholder engagement about a proposed toll bridge. About 50 people were willing and able to attend the sessions in person, while others were not. I had been experimenting with live streaming, so I proposed a hybrid model.
We successfully hosted an engagement session involving participants in the room and others joining online. We set up the venue to accommodate social distancing for those attending in-person and we used screens on tables for those joining online to interact with the groups. We also used cameras within the room to ensure online participants could see what was going on at the in-person venue. Despite a few technical bumps, it worked. Perhaps the biggest learning curve as a facilitator was ensuring that participants online were treated equitably regarding providing their input.
We adapted. We learned. We adapted again. For the most part, we have found new ways to facilitate public engagement without everyone (or anyone) physically in the room.
Post-pandemic public engagement: We are not going back
The pandemic forcing us to engage with the public differently has been a gift in several ways:
Expanded audiences
Before the pandemic, it was often a struggle to get high numbers of people to come out to events. We seldom held engagement sessions during the day because of poor attendance. I’ve seen that shift with the availability of attending virtually. As work and home life have blurred, people are able to attend a hour-long session in the afternoon, for example, while they take a break from work or family tasks. Generally, it’s just much easier for people to participate. They don’t have to travel anywhere or hire childcare.
As we’ve become more skilled at online facilitation, it’s become easier and more enjoyable for everyone. Joining a Zoom conference, presentation, or meeting is no longer novel but a routine part of our lives.
Increased accessibility
Virtual public engagement has allowed us to reach those with disabilities much more easily. Those with mobility challenges need not make special arrangements to attend in person, for example. Talk-to-text translation on virtual meeting platforms means that language is not necessarily a barrier to participation. Although not perfect, I have no doubt these tools will continue to improve. A virtual conference based in California I attended recently provided an option at login to join the Spanish or English stream. It was seamless.
The ability to tailor online sessions to various accessibility needs is far easier to do than at in-person venues.
Reduced cost
It is significantly less expensive to host virtual public engagement sessions. There are no travel, venue rental, or catering costs to worry about online. The virtual environment allows us to expand our reach and level of participation beyond what was once possible.
Of course, there are disadvantages to virtual engagement as well, including:
Internet access and reliability
Reliable internet service infrastructure is not uniform region-to-region and not everyone can afford a computer or mobile device, which limits participation in certain demographics.
Participants must plan to engage
When we set up engagement opportunities on a street corner or in a park, people who may not have thought of adding their voice to a discussion on city planning or a new social program will participate by chance. The online world does not as easily provide this serendipitous opportunity.
The future of public engagement
The future of public engagement is a hybrid of the on and offline models. Now that we’ve seen the advantages of virtual sessions, why would we turn back? Why wouldn’t we combine the flexibility and ease of online participation with the rich, dynamic environment of in-person interaction? Our stakeholders will expect it. We can use the best of both worlds for stronger, deeper engagement.
As daunting as quickly adopting the online tools has been to making virtual public engagement work, I am grateful the pandemic forced this direction. Once the world fully opens up again, I plan to further optimize the online/offline hybrid path I, and others in the public engagement sector, have started walking.
What that means is being open to continuing to evolve how we do things. It means putting our “expert” hats aside and listening to what people need over the next six months to a year. I have no doubt that how we facilitate public engagement will continue to develop as we experiment with how we design sessions and manage the dynamics of in-person and online interactions.
If you’ve had exciting revelations about online facilitation, I’d love it if you reached out to tell me about them.