We successfully adapted the fishbowl format to a fully virtual setting for our 2025 Fall Meeting and Community Conversation. Here are four strategies we used that can help you plan your next virtual fishbowl:
- Pre-select your first round of participants. This group received prompts in advance and had a meeting to discuss expectations and talking points. Having a group model the format helped others know how to engage.
- Use a virtual background to display discussion prompt and timer. This helped keep the prompt visible without a shared screen, and kept the timer front and center. We leveraged the pre-set features so it was easy to turn on a timer whenever someone started talking. We started with a 4 minute timer for the first longer round, and then a 2 minute timer for subsequent rounds. The timer feature changes colors to help speakers gauge how much time they have left to speak and use the most of our time together.
- Set clear roles to support the session. For this event we had an adept moderator, a time keeper, and someone to replace spotlights when people entered and left the fishbowl. The person spotlighting was also monitoring the chat but this could be a distinct role if you have more capacity.
- Do pre-event engagement on the topic. Our pre-event survey on Mentimeter helped us know where pain points were and focused the conversation on strategies and solutions rather than dwelling on what’s not working. Mentimeter was a good choice for us because it allowed anyone filling out the survey to see others’ comments and for us to easily display a summary of results during the live event.
Fishbowl format symposia have been popular at our in-person conferences for a number of years as they allow for a wide range of voices and perspectives to be heard. We were pleased with the engagement in this virtual format and look forward to forging new connections with this event structure at future virtual events. This event was made better by our moderator, AAPS board member Natasha Udu-gama, whose 2022 blog post on fishbowl sessions was the inspiration for this event format at our recent conferences.
