Virtual Flip Charts - How to set them up in your meeting webcam for free

Virtual Flip Charts are a free, simple and easy way of including a flip chart 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.

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

Virtual Flip Charts bring this basic technology directly into your webcam.

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

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

Quick Start

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

Link to vieo explaining the benefits of virtual flip charts

Link to video on how to install the Virtual Flip Chart

Why Virtual Flip Charts?

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

The flip chart 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 flip chart raises energy, aids consensus, and builds ownership – practically everything we desire from our leadership.

[read more=”Click here to Read More” less=”Read Less”]
Facilitator using flip chart to describe the benefits of using flipcharts In fact, the flip chart 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 flip charts 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.

Image of Virtual Flip Chart in Use But have you considered creating virtual flip charts 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 Flip Charts 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 flip chart, it is easy to transfer the output to the next stage of your process for sticky notes or voting. [/read]

How to set up Virtual Flip Charts?

Images of how simply a Virtual Flip Chart is brought together

The Virtual Flip Chart solution consists of four main elements:

Your existing webcam
Virtual webcam software, which takes your existing webcam and enables you to add to it: OBS, mmhmm, …
Your virtual meeting software: Zoom, Teams, Webex, or whatever you use to host or attend online meetings
Your choice of Virtual Flip Chart from the zero cost options we have created in Powerpoint and Word

Assembling these into a Virtual Flip Chart for use within your meetings is very easy and can be done in just a few minutes. Once you have done this, you can add it to your webcam in any online meeting with just a click of your mouse.

Virtual Webcam Software

There are currently two main options which support Virtual Flip Charts.

OBS is an open source (totally free) solution with excellent flexibility. It is available to download from the OBS Project site – obsproject.com It can be used very simply, and can be set up in less than 5 minutes. However, some people find it its versatility and options off-putting (even though you don’t need to use them). Guidance in using it as a Virtual Flip Chart can be found here.

mmhmm is a new commercial venture which is currently in beta, and is not yet priced. Its options are more limited than OBS, but are more than sufficient for supporting Virtual Flip Charts. It can be downloaded as an App from mmhmm.app and set up even more quickly than OBS. And its simplicity of application can make it easier to use. Guidance in using it as a Virtual Flip Chart can be found here.

Special case for Apple. Users have reported that there is a setting that needs to be changed to use Virtual Flip Charts on the Mac. If you are a Mac user [read more=”click here to Read More” less=”Read Less”]
I am indebted to Andrea Buchtel who generously posted the following guidance:I got this working on my Mac today (macOS 10.15.7) using OBS 26.1.2 but I had to do one step that was not obvious because, by default, OBS could not access the Powerpoint window.

If you refer to this forum post: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/mac-and-window-capture.73434

/ pblivingston provided the necessary extra steps that worked for me today. The issue is that you need to allow OBS to record your screen in order to “see” the application windows, but that option is not trigged automatically by the installation. These are the steps:

Create a scene in OBS
Add a source to the scene
Select Window Capture
Create New > OK
Tick the box labeled “Show Windows with empty names”
Select a source (“Window”) labeled [Null].
When prompted, go to System Preferences and allow OBS to record your screen.

After following these steps, the [Null] windows are now properly labeled and everything shows up even when the “Show Windows with empty names” box is not ticked. [/read]

Virtual Meeting Software

The advantage of sharing a Flip Chart via your webcam in Virtual Meetings is that it is more intimate and engaging than screen sharing. People can continue to see each other more easily. And its look and feel is more familiar to them from physical meetings. As such it provides helpful psychological associations with past experiences. And it can bridge the gap in providing visible direction while still in open conversation.

To use your Virtual Webcam in your Virtual Meeting Software, simply select it as your video source when you join the meeting. Guidance on how to do this for the most popular Virtual Meeting options can be found here.

Virtual Flip Chart Options

The most popular and effective Virtual Flip Chart options are based on PowerPoint files.

Which PowerPoint option you pick depends on what you want to do with your Virtual Flip Chart. The best option for general purpose use is the classical Flip Chart, but there is a continuously growing library of other options (see the next section).

To use these PowerPoint versions, simply open them up, and on the ‘View’ ribbon, simply click ‘New Window’ and then ‘Reading View’.

This gives you two windows on the same file. One in SlideShow mode, and the other in edit mode. Now, whatever you type, scribe, draw or paste into the flip chart in the edit window will appear instantly on the slideshow window.

This is a standard PowerPoint file, so the following are very easy to do:

Creating additional flip chart 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 flip chart content for distribution or import into Conceptboard, Mural etc.

What else can we do with Virtual Flip Charts?

The range of participative technologies that now exist in the web space provide almost limitless possiblities for Virtual Flip Charts to bridge between the technology of what is possible and people’s need for what is familiar.

For example, if you wish to use more variety than the traditional flip chart design, we have gradually developed a gallery of different board styles: whiteboards, blackboards, pin-boards, sheets of free-floating paper, …

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 flip chart-based tools: timers, emoticons, tracking tools, supercards (flash cards), … And others include templates for simple tools such as SWOT, PMI, Fishbones, …

The design of the Virtual Flip Chart is such that it is easy to engage people initially via your Virtual Flip Chart on your webcam. And then, to increase ownership and creativity further, quickly and effortlessly transfer the content to sticky-notes on a whiteboard tool so that they can contribute and engage more directly in developing solutions.

The Virtual Flip Chart based tools have Whiteboard counterparts which you can access freely for shared use at a click of your mouse. And we are currently in a 12-week programme in Leading by Adventure to explore how these tools can be used to solicit more creative and adventurous contributions from you and your team.

If you have your own ideas for how the Virtual Flip Chart might develop further, please feel free to contribute your suggestions via this Linkedin post.

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 Flip Chart files, then it is simply a matter of (in this order) 1. Opening the flip chart 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 Flip Chart contents into a Virtual Whiteboard?

Yes. There are two main options for this. You can copy the contents of your virtual flip chart 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 flip chart, 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 Flip Chart?

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.

Track your progress to ensure the efficacy of this strategy.