Battle of Perspectives: A Fresh Way to Engage Your Community

Let me suggest you the format I successfully implemented within AI/ML community in 2024. It's a new reading of lecture format, but with interesting flavor. Although experts will present opposing concepts, this won't be a real battle. The goal is to persuade the community about the benefits of a particular approach. Participants can take a stance against the approach, even if the expert presents the clearest and most compelling arguments in its favor.

The format combines both presentation and discussion. An expert shares their ideas with the community, which then explores ways to apply these ideas in their work—or dismiss them as irrelevant—depending on which Zoom breakout room they are assigned to. The expert then reflects on the most interesting thoughts suggested by attendees. Engaging, thought-provoking, and far from boring.

For example, battle between two different algorithms. This format will include this detailed agenda:

• Introduction to the community, battle format, and agenda.

• A presentation on algorithm #1

• A discussion #1 with collaborative idea generation in PPT.

• Reflection of expert on several ideas from PPT.

• A presentation on algorithm #2

• A discussion #2 with collaborative idea generation in PPT.

• Expert reflection on selected ideas from the discussion.

• Q&A session.

Preparation Before the Session

Find two experts who are willing to "defend" their approach, meaning they will prepare a presentation covering the advantages and nuances of each algorithm type.

Prepare two Google Slides presentations with editing access, one for each algorithm type:

• Advantages of algorithm #1

• Disadvantages of algorithm #1

• Advantages of algorithm #2

• Disadvantages of algorithm #2

These presentations will serve as collaborative spaces for idea generation during the discussion. *Why this tool? Since everyone is familiar with Google Slides, standard PPT files with editing access should be used instead of Mural or Miro (which are awesome too) to avoid wasting time on onboarding participants with new tools.

How to Engage Community into Session?

In addition to the main presentations announced by the session moderator, the administrator should manually pre-assign participants to two Zoom breakout rooms:

• One room for participants 'in favor,' where they will generate the advantages of the algorithm.

• One room for those "against" for people who will generate the disadvantages of algorithms.

Before assigning participants to rooms:

• Share the links to the collaborative idea-generation space in the chat.

• Verbally announce that the links are available in the chat and participants should follow them.

• Explain how to use the Google Slides: add your ideas on empty fields, avoid erasing the ideas of the others, use the empty fields, add your idea even if you don't feel like discussing it with the group, etc.

In breakout rooms admins should reshare the link in their respective breakout rooms and encourage participants to add ideas, maybe have two-three reserve ones just to start the conversation.

After the first discussion in the rooms everyone will return to the main room automatically after the time for rooms is over (we usually dedicate 10 minutes for each discussion). Then, remind the expert to reflect on one or two ideas generated by the community if time allows. If not, just move to the second presentation. The wrap up is dedicated to the Q&A to both experts.

Why battle is cool format for online community event?

1. You can highlight several experts during one session and allow them to exchange the ideas and give an opposite opinion.

2. It encourages critical thinking about both the pros and cons of different approaches without allowing participants to pre-select a side. This may push participants out of their comfort zone but leads to deeper insights.

3. The community-generated ideas can be shared on social media as they are, or expanded upon by experts to create separate articles.

4. Both experts can cover various sides of questions during the Q&A and compliment each other. It's cool to have several people with expertise during one session.

Examples of pairings for battle in different domains

Domain	Sub-domain	About what to battle?
Project Management	Estimation battle	Storypoints vs. No Estimation
Machine Learning	Quantum Machine Learning	Near-term and Fault-tolerant Algorithms
Quality Assurance	Test Strategy	Manual Testing vs. Automated Testing
Product Management	Roadmapping	Feature-Driven Development vs. Outcome-Driven Development
MLOps	Model Monitoring	Performance Monitoring vs. Drift Detection
DevOps	CI/CD	GitOps vs. Traditional CI/CD
Community Management	Monetization	Paid Memberships vs. Sponsorship-Based Funding
Artificial Intelligence	AI Models	Symbolic AI vs. Deep Learning
Data Science	Data Storage	SQL vs. NoSQL for Data Storage

Would you try the battle format in your community?

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Check my presentations in Ukrainian about Community Engagement: кращі практики та кейси по гейміфікації and Community Manager: роль, навички, та інструменти.