Our ‘Reflection and Movement’ webinar offered an approach for us to keep in touch and develop a new way forward for the growing, diverse Wessex Q Community. Whilst not all members are able to access webinars during a working day, the people that did join came from a range of backgrounds and were active participators in the discussions. Following on from the webinar our intention is to add the slides and recording to the Q community platform for others to view and comment.
The webinar covered three areas – reflection and feedback on the welcome event, sharing resources and next steps.

Reflection and feedback

Lots of work had taken place to develop the welcome event for the Q Wessex community through a steering group of existing members. After the event Lesley Mackenzie and Tracy Broom collated all the feedback from the event and a snapshot from the activities on the day is provided below.

It was not all pants and vests though; we also took members views on Q. These views are possibly similar to other Q members throughout the network and could easily be used as a starting point for discussions about how the community develops in other areas.

To consolidate our learning Tracy Broom has written a piece for the source4networks platform on the work of building a network. This provides practical knowledge and handy tips that could be used throughout the Q community.

Interesting insight was provided after the event by the ‘how should we contact you board’ where people put their dots in a table indicating which option they preferred. As you can see this was a useful exercise as Q members were very clear on what worked for them. This will guide the communication approach used and ensure that we focus in the right places.

Evidence from various Q members at the local event suggested that as introverts they found that at times the event could be overwhelming with all the networking. This is worth considering in future national and local events as we all have a mix of introverts and extroverts like any community. How do we build in features that support and care for all?

As someone who attended the big national welcome event, the intensive networking and activities can be overwhelming, even for extroverts! Building in quiet, reflective time is valuable and will support meaningful conversations and connection.
We need to include all our members equally from whatever background, to make our community one where everyone included. I previously developed in partnership with a fellow Q member Alison Cameron and Horizons NHS, the People’s Transformathon for NHSE. This event gained the Stanford MedX tier 4, Everyone Included award, the first time this has been gained by a UK event. Within Q we need to follow the principles of ‘Everyone Included’ to ensure that we celebrate the diversity and involvement of all the community.

Sharing resources

The source for networks platform was showcased to members at the regional event and a link is provided on the webinar slides. The platform is free to access and includes diagnostics that you can use to develop your network or community, resources and a S4N Community. We have set up our own network on the platform so that our members can connect with each other through this approach.

Next steps

Reflections from the webinar and welcome event have given the Q steering group lots of great ideas to take forward. One event which is in planning stage is a Q Coffee morning, which will be a way for the community to connect over coffee, like a big randomised coffee trial for Wessex in March. It would be great if you want to follow our progress in building a local Q community on twitter via #QWessex.

You can view the slides from the webinar here.