Hosting a roundtable: FAQs

Who can host/attend an ON Community Roundtable?

Any member of the ON Community. That includes you! 💪

Who can host/attend a COOhort Roundtable?

Members of the ON Community who happen to be COOs/people who hold the position of the most senior ops person in their company. Our aim is to create a safe space for senior ops people to discuss challenges and share ideas in a private setting. For less sensitive topics, we recommend hosting an ON Community Workshop - more info here.

What does it take to host a roundtable?

To organise a roundtable, you must have:

• A topic that you'd like to discuss.
• 20 minutes to think about / write down your topic & questions and pass them on to Becca via our Airtable form. Becca will set up the event page and share it with the community.
• 1.5 hour for the actual discussion.

Why should I host a roundtable?

You should organise a roundtable if/when:

• You've got a challenge / issue on your hands that you'd like others' input and advice on.
• You have a more "philosophical" topic that you'd like to dive into.
• You think that a particular topic is super important to discuss and would like to hear everyone else's opinions.
• You want to meet people in similar industry, business model, circumstance or situation.
• (There's probably a million other good reasons!)

What can I host a roundtable on?

• Any topic related to operations (you've got a vast choice as ops can cover pretty much everything!), personal/professional growth, etc. Because you're an ON Community member, if a particular topic is interesting to you, you'll most likely find that many other members will take an interest in it, too.
• The more narrow the topic, the more defined and helpful the conversation will be (e.g. "How to pick the right CRM for a SaaS business"). However, this shouldn't prevent you from bringing the topics that are broader, e.g. "Overcoming the biggest challenges in marketplace operations".
• For inspiration, check out our Events Calendar to see the topics of our previous roundtables.

Who normally attends and what's the format?

• Depending on the topic, we usually have 10-30 attendees.
• The most usual format is: whoever brings the discussion topic is called "the host" and will kick off the discussion by making a short 3-minute introduction to themselves and the topic they'd like to discuss. Then, we split up into smaller discussion groups (4-5 people each) to discuss for the next hour or so. For the last 20 minutes of the event, we come back together and each smaller group shares their takeaways with everyone else. That's pretty much it!
• Having said that, there's no fixed standard format - this is your session and you can run it in whatever format you'd like. Be creative!

What's a successful roundtable?

• If at the end of the roundtable, you feel like your question was answered and you're leaving with a solution or a couple of actions to apply, we consider it a success. 🎉
• Clear next steps. Are there any actions that we can put together as a group to tackle the issue/topic at hand? 🤔

You decided to host a roundtable. Awesomeness! 🤗 What's next?

Planning

• Pick a topic.
• Think of a few questions that you'd like to tackle during the discussion. 3-4 questions are normally sufficient.
• Pick a date. 3-12 weeks from now, starting at 8:00 AM or 5:00 PM UK time, Tuesday or Wednesday. Ideally, it should be on a week that doesn't have any other ON Community events - Becca will help you by providing info until we have a private event calendar set up for the community.
• Let Becca know what's your topic, date/time, preferred format, and send us your questions. This is the format of the event that will be presented to everyone. DM Becca on Slack or email community@operationsnation.com to get a link to the submission form. Check out some previous roundtables for inspiration. Also, let us know if you'd like to stick to the regular format or if you have something else in mind.
• We will set up your event on Luma and send you the link for any changes / your final approval. We will be adding you as a co-host to the event so you can see the data, registrations and feedback in real-time if you're interested. NB: Luma is like Eventbrite, just better for our use case. 😉
• We will share your event with the community at least 2 weeks before the date of the event. You don't need to do anything. :) We'll make sure that everyone has a Zoom link and know where to make notes relevant to the event.
• We will send you and all attendees a Google Doc open to edits, where everyone can start adding their notes and comments ahead of the session.

During the event

• Becca will be there to help you welcome everyone, give you a sign when to kick off, split everyone into breakout rooms, and keep it to the schedule.
• In the beginning, we'll ask you to introduce yourself and the topic (~5 mins), and what you're looking to get out of the session.
• We'll then split everyone into breakout rooms for discussion in groups of 4-5 people (unless you're going with a different format). You will be assigned to one of the breakout rooms to discuss your own topic and will be expected to moderate your small group's discussion / keep it on track.
• 20-30 minutes before the end of the roundtable, we'll call everyone back to the main room to share their learnings.
• We'll probably ask if you have any final words or remarks too.
• It's a wrap! 🌯

After the event

• That's it! You're done! Thank you so much for being the awesome host that you most definitely were. 💪
• Totally up to you, but if you'd like to do anything else with the roundtable's content (e.g. write a blog post, etc.) please feel free to. 🙂

Roundtable format

As per Ops Stories tradition, every now and then, we put our heads together to dive into an operational topic presented to us by one of our community members.

The format is simple and informal - the host presents the topic and shares a couple of questions, we split into small groups (3-5 people), and then we discuss. At the end of the session, we bring our learnings together so we can share them with the wider community.

This time, the topic is brought and conversation facilitated by YOUR NAME, YOUR TITLE at YOUR COMPANY. We’ll be talking about YOUR TOPIC.

2-3 SENTENCES INTRODUCING THE TOPIC.

🤔 Some questions we’ll be tackling:

QUESTION 1

QUESTION 2

QUESTION 3

QUESTION 4

⏰ Agenda:

5:00 - 5:05 pm - Welcome

5:05 - 5:15 pm - Kicking off with topic introduction

5:15 - 6:00 pm - Discussion in small groups

6:00 - 6:30 pm - Regroup and align on session outputs