Virtual Flipcharts

Virtual Flipcharts are a free, simple and easy way of including a flipchart electronically in your webcam. They help engage participation and form a helpful, and easy to distribute record of the meeting. Their familiarity helps bridge the divide between what is possible and what people are comfortable with.

Flipcharts are probably the most powerful tool for effectively facilitating a meeting.

Virtual Flipcharts bring this basic technology directly into your webcam.

• What is a Virtual Flipchart
  and why are they so powerful?
• How easy is it to set up
  my own Virtual Flipchart?
• What else can I do with
  my Virtual Flipchart?
• FAQs about Virtual Flipcharts?

Use the links above to move to the section you require. Click the flipchart images above right to download the Powerpoint file you require, or click here for more flipchart styles.

Quick Start

Simply watch the videos below (3 mins and 7 mins) to quickly understand the power of virtual flipcharts, and how easy it is to set one up in OBS open source software.

Why Virtual Flipcharts?

The most powerful tool in facilitating or leading a meeting is probably the humble flipchart. While facilitation has come a long way since the advent of the flipchart, it still remains a staple of facilitative leadership, and for good reason.

The flipchart might even be seen as the physical characterisation of facilitation:

It provides focus; solicits input; recognises contributions; maintains interest; records progress; and enables connections, sense-making and meaning to emerge from within the group.

As such, using a flipchart raises energy, aids consensus, and builds ownership – practically everything we desire from our leadership.

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In fact, the flipchart is so helpful that it is not uncommon to see good facilitators include them on their webcam, and turn to them to capture input from their meetings, or to explain ideas interactively.

But the fact is that physical flipcharts don’t work quite as well in the virtual world as they do in the physical one. They need extra space. It is not always easy to see their content. And using them draws the leader away from their engagement with their team.

But have you considered creating virtual flipcharts on your webcam? One that is clearer to see; Easier to engage with; Taking no space; Leaving you free to remain close to your team; And which doesn’t have the disruptive impact of screen sharing?

Perhaps you didn’t realise such a thing was possible. But it is, at zero cost, and surprisingly easy to achieve. Installing your own Virtual Flipcharts can be done in less than 15 minutes. And once it is installed, making it live and visible to your meeting is a simple matter of clicking a button.

Furthermore, unlike a physical flipchart, it is easy to transfer the output to the next stage of your process for sticky notes or voting.

How to set up Virtual Flipcharts?

The Virtual Flipchart solution consists of four main elements:

1. Your existing webcam
2. Virtual webcam software, which takes your existing webcam and enables you to add to it: OBS, mmhmm, …
3. Your virtual meeting software: Zoom, Teams, Webex, or whatever you use to host or attend online meetings
4. Your choice of Virtual Flipchart from a range of zero cost options and tools in Powerpoint and Word

1. Webcam

2. Virtual Webcam Software

3. Virtual Meeting Software

4. Virtual Flipchart Options

• Creating additional flipchart sheets in the edit window
• Preparing certain sheets in advance with images or written content
• Moving between sheets by using the up down keys or the scroll wheel in the SlideShow window
• Typing directly into placeholders on a sheet, and having the text immediately resize
• Using the ‘Draw’ ribbon to use pen input on the sheet
• Exporting the Flipchart content for distribution or import into Conceptboard, Mural etc.

What else can we do with Virtual Flipcharts?

But our biggest interest is increasing the use of thinking tools to better engage people in meetings. To support this we have been developing a wide range of flipchart-based tools: timers, emoticons, tracking tools, supercards (flash cards), … And others include templates for simple tools such as SWOT, PMI, Fishbones, …

FAQs

If you have a question that is not on this list, please post it via this Linkedin post and I will endeavour to respond promptly, and update the answers below as appropriate.

Question: Do I have to follow these steps every time?

No. OBS can be left running. If your machine restarts, but you have already set up OBS and saved the Flipchart files, then it is simply a matter of (in this order) 1. Opening the flipchart file. 2. Using the View ribbon to create a new window, and to set it to reading view and resize it. 3. Opening OBS, and checking it is picking up the webcam and the reading window correctly.

Question: Can I use my webcam normally?

If OBS is not running, you can use your webcam normally by selecting it in your meeting software. However, if you want to use OBS, you will need to set it up, along with the two PowerPoint windows, before the meeting and before you open any meeting software. Otherwise there may be a hardware conflict, and OBS will likely crash.
If you encounter problems in getting things to appear exactly as you want them in OBS, right click the images on the screen and try out some of the options there.

Question: Is OBS safe?

It certainly appears to be. It is widely used, and I couldn’t find anything on reported issues. However, I am not qualified to give security advice so if this is a particular concern for you, please speak to someone who is.

Question: Can I use OBS for other things?

Yes. Over time I hope to proved a wealth of resources to enable you to include: clocks/timers; tool templates; slide decks; etc. If you are up with it, I would encourage you to play with loading up various sources and seeing how they work together.

Question: Can I make Teams show my image the right way round?

Not as far as I can discover, and certainly not easily. I think we have to wait for Microsoft to realise this is something they need to work on.

Question: My computer is asking me to install Microsoft Visual C++ – is that OK?

To avoid bloating your machine, Microsoft typically doesn’t load everything you might need from the outset. It waits until you load something that requires a particular piece of software and then you get a request to load that element of the operating system. In the case of a lot of software it is Microsoft C++. I understand this is perfectly normal. And given it is Microsoft, the advice I have been given by those in the know is that it will be okay.

Question: Can I put the Virtual Flipchart contents into a Virtual Whiteboard?

Yes. There are two main options for this. You can copy the contents of your virtual flipchart page as text and paste it into a text object in the whiteboard. But my preferred method is to paste it into a blank spreadsheet, and then copy the cells it creates and past them into the whiteboard. In Conceptboard and Mural this has the effect of turning each item into its own sticky note.

If you have more than one page to your flipchart, you can use the outline view to copy the content of multiple pages at once.

Question: Can I integrate the Toolchest tools in my Virtual Flipchart?

Yes. I hope to explain how in subsequent articles.

Question: Is there a cost for this?

Yes and no. We want as many people as possible to benefit freely from this resource. All we ask of you (the ‘cost’) is that you do what you can to help them find it. Please let your network know that this resource is here, and what you think of it.

Question: Can I freely share these resources?

Absolutely, the more the merrier. All we ask is that you attribute their source.