Best Tool for an Online Brainstorming Session
Organise the most creative brainstorming session. Get started in minutes!
What’s brainstorming?
Brainstorming is a method creative groups and companies use to create new ideas to come up with novel solutions to clearly defined problems. A perfect brainstorming session provides controlled conditions and a free-thinking environment where teams can approach the questions and challenges with a clear mind and minimum amount of limitations. Brainstorming sessions produce usually produce a number of ideas and draw links between them to find potential novel solutions to problems.
Brainstorming in a virtual workplace
Brainstorming meetings are highly dynamic and creative. If done in a physical office, the team that is attending the meeting might be using various physical tools like a whiteboard, sticky notes, images, and so on to illustrate and present their ideas. Remote teams don’t have this luxury. All of the work is happening virtually and they need to use real-time collaborative software to replace a physical whiteboard.
Best tool for online brainstorming: flat.social!
How to create the perfect environment online for a brainstorming session that will be creative and productive? The answer is simple - create a virtual office on flat.social where your remote team will be able to hang out and chat like they would be in a physical location together.flat.social allows your remote team to brainstorm, connect and collaborate in a fun virtual workspace that replicates the communicational dynamics of a physical office. At the core, every participant can move around and talk with others in proximity. Creating your first virtual workspace is really simple - you only need to create a permanent space (takes less than minute) and distribute the link to your team.
1. Sign up for free & create a virtual space on flat.social
2. Customise the space and brand it with your team’s logo
3. Add the link to the calendar invites. The link to a flat is permanent and never changes which makes it easier to join in.
4. If you wish, connect the virtual space with your Slack workspace and set up recurring reminders that will notify your team about any events and meetings that you would like to organise in the space.
Tips for productive and creative online brainstorming
Begin with description of the problem that you’re trying to solve
While brainstorming meetings are free-thinking, participants need to know what problem they are trying to solve before engaging in the creative process and coming up with new solutions. Clearly defining the problem that the team will be trying to solve will help to clear up any confusion making your session much more productive.
Set a time limit
Brainstorming sessions are open and creative. The main idea is to provide a lot of potential solutions to a given problem while staying open to ideas that might not be immediately obvious. Since the session is so open, it’s important to set a time limit on how long should it go. Creative teams can continue generating new ideas and after a certain period there is no point to brainstorm anymore
Encourage uncommon ideas
Think outside the box! If your team has been working on the same problem already for a while, there is a high chance that they might be getting stuck in their way of thinking seeing more limitations than opportunities. Encouraging ideas that are highly creative and sometimes slightly crazy might not only result in a good one but also inspire other team members to look at the problem from a different perspective.
Quantity over quality
Brainstorming sessions are there to generate ideas, not to find the best one. Leave sorting and ranking ideas for later. The more ideas you gather during the session, the higher chance that one of them will be the one that you’re looking for.
Focus on the visual collaboration and take notes
If you’re in a physical office, provide a whiteboard, sticky notes, and any other tool that will help your team to illustrate and record the ideas that they have stumbled upon. In a virtual brainstorming session scenario, make sure to use the right white-boarding tools so that your team can collaborate effortlessly and creatively.
Movement and Interaction
With flat.social participants are not chained to a grid of tiny squares like they would in a classic videoconference. Instead, they can move around the rooms like they would in any multiplayer game.
Learn more about movement & interaction
Rooms & Activities
Your new virtual spaces can consist of multiple different types of rooms. Each room can be different - a mini-game, activity or something special for your team.
Dependently on the type of room, you will be able to host from 10 to 100 simultaneous guests.
See rooms & activities available
Spatial Media
By default each guest can only hear & see others around. Spatial audio and video allows for more natural and spontaneous conversations that are based on proximity, not on the loudest guests.
Want to speak with someone? Simply fly up!
Learn more about spatial audio & video
Collaborative, real-time whiteboard
Add colorful drawings, images, stickers, sticky notes and much more. Whichever room or activity type you choose, you can use it as a real-time collaborative whiteboard.
Build your own space
Build your own virtual space for your team or event by selecting from many of the available rooms and activities.
Each room is special and can be placed in whichever position you want. Fancy a quick retreat on the beach? Simply add the beach elements into your space :)
Physics 💫
Expression
It's so much more than just a plain video-chat. Guests in a flat.social meeting can express themselves through a variety of virtual gestures and customizations on how they present themselves.
From becoming a godzilla to doing a frog dance, it's all built to be playful and interactive.
Presentations and Screensharing
Engage your guests with interactive presentations and talks by using the spatial screen sharing and broadcasting features! Whether you're giving a talk or want to present something with a real-time video stream, sharing the live screenshare will be an experience that seamlessly integrates into the virtual space.
Frequently asked questions
What are the fun features of flat.social?
From flying around to playing football and doing a frog dance, there is plenty! We built those features to make flat.social the most fun place to organise an event online. Read more features that we built.
Is there a need to install anything?
No need to install anything new. It all runs in the web browser both on desktop and mobile. Safari and Chrome are doing great, Firefox is catching up!
Do you support simultaneous screensharing?
Yep, a number of participants can screenshare at the same time. Those can be positioned next to each other or distributed in various locations around the virtual space.
How much does it cost?
Check out thepricing page to see free and pro plans available.
Can I use it as an alternative to ZOOM or Microsoft Teams?
Sure, if all you do is fun and creative meetings! (we sincerly hope so:)
Over the past 3 years we learned that while ZOOM and Microsoft teams are amazing tools to keep you productive, they're not optimized to to keep a group of people connected, engaged and happy.
Hence, flat.social was created. It does not aim to be a complete replacement - it's an addition for when the priorities switch from productivity to human interaction. It's here to bring smile and show that spontanous creative moments and connections can happen without having to travel to an office or an event venue.
How do participants move in a flat.social meeting?
Meeting attendees can use WASD keys like in multi-player games or drag themselves around with a mouse.
How do I speak to all of the guests at once?
The experience is spatial by default - only ones around will hear you. You can however use the loudspeaker feature to speak to everyone at once. It's useful if you want to make an announcement or managing a larger workshop where attendees are distributed around the room.
