3 ways to spice up your Remote Workshops

A lot has been covered on running remote workshops and doing remote facilitation ever since this pandemic started. For me, it's a new experience and here are 3 things I've tried recently to bring the distance of remote, closer.

1. Add some background music to liven things up

During the days of in-person live workshops, you often have the facilitator playing some background music during ideation activities mainly to break that silence and stimulate creativity. How do you do that online?

Sure, you can play songs through your phone and put it close to your microphone but what your participants hear from the other end isn't going to be great.

The folks at Rogue Amoeba (Strange name. Great software.) created this amazing app call Loopback which I have been using for a while now.

It allows you to route sounds from any sources into a virtual audio input channel which you select on your conferencing app like Zoom / Google Meet / MS Teams etc.

For example, you can add Spotify (or as many other sources you prefer) as your source and any sound from Spotify will be heard by the folks on the other side. This allows you to play your favourite Workshop Playlist during those minutes of brainstorming.

"These elevator music makes me feel like I'm back in office having a workshop" - participant

2. Add Sound Effects

Once you realised that background music can do wonders, try sound effects 😏. Again combining Loopback with other sound sources, you can find sound effects from say Youtube and route that sound into your workshop to add virtual crowd cheers or drum roll.

Personally, I found another of their app Farrago perfect for this. Farrago is a software-based soundboard which you can use to fire up sound bites or effects using keyboard shortcuts. Option-R for a clock ticking sound to let participants know time is running out or Option-T for some crowd cheer to celebrate the participant's effort.

While sound effects can never replace the real applause and cheer, it can add some fun to your remote workshops. But remember! Use it sparingly and don't annoy others, it can get addictive firing Laser or Bike Bell sounds.

3. Make any of your microphone noise cancellation

Not everyone works in a quiet environment, you may have kids shouting, dogs barking or even cats meowing. The worst, fan blowing!

As a facilitator, having clear, audible sound is important especially when that's the only "cue" participants have. To do that, I use this app Krisp which removes the noise in my background and you can even use it to remove background noise coming from your participants too!

I've also wrote an article on how to use Krisp here. Give Krisp a try and if you'd like, here's 1 month of free Pro for you :)

Disclaimer: I'm sharing on Rogue Amoeba's app because I really like their products and benefited from using them. They don't have an affiliate programme so this is not a sponsored post.

If you know of any other free / cheaper solutions or have other interesting tips to spice up remote workshops, leave it in the comments below!

Good luck with your next online workshop 💪🏻