ThemeTech & the online room
CardCard 21 of 63
Questions5 to explore
StepSet up the tech

Internet Connection

Source, speed & reliability among the participants

A remote workshop is only as strong as the weakest internet connection in the room.

Connection quality is invisible until it fails, and when it fails during a session it is disruptive: video freezes, audio cuts out, someone drops off entirely. For participants on unstable connections, the experience of the workshop is fragmentary even when they are technically still in the call.

You cannot control what participants connect from, but you can ask about it in advance, design sessions to be more resilient to connection drops, and have a fallback when someone goes offline mid-activity.

Online, specificallyIn a room connection is irrelevant; online it is a basic infrastructure question that affects who can fully participate, and it needs to be solved or worked around before the session, not during it.

In a remote session

The same building block as it plays out online: how experienced facilitators tend to handle it when the room is a screen. Illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

Ask in advance

Good facilitators ask participants in the pre-session communication whether they have a stable connection and whether they have a mobile data fallback, so connection problems are surfaced before the session starts.

Camera off as a fallback

They tell participants clearly that turning their camera off is always allowed and often improves connection stability, so no one feels they have to choose between being seen and staying connected.

Design for drop-offs

They build the session so that someone dropping and rejoining in the middle of an activity does not lose the thread, by keeping instructions visible in the shared workspace and recapping regularly.

Have a phone backup ready

They share a dial-in phone number alongside the video link in the invite, so someone who loses video can stay on audio while they troubleshoot.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Have you asked participants in advance about their connection quality and whether they have a fallback?
What will you do if a participant drops off mid-activity?
Is your own connection stable and wired rather than relying on wireless?
Have you shared a phone dial-in option for participants who lose video?
Is the session designed so that instructions are still visible even if someone misses a few minutes?

What trips people up online

Participants on cellular or public wifi often do not mention it until they start dropping out; proactively asking normalises the conversation and surfaces it early.
The facilitator's own connection is the single most important one in the room; run on wired ethernet during the session wherever possible.
Long video sessions with everyone's camera on are significantly more bandwidth-intensive than audio-only; telling the group when cameras-off is fine can prevent connection degradation over a long session.