Written Conversations

Description

Qiqo has written conversations similar to listservs and email forums.

example threaded conversation on Qiqo
An example of a threaded conversation on Qiqo

How Is It Different?

Google Groups and standard email discussion lists have one “thread” or per conversation.  This causes different topics to get intermingled and everyone gets lost in the sauce.

With Qiqo, you can create separate topics within the same conversation, and participants can reply to each one independently.

There is also a neat “Map View” of each conversation.  Here’s an example:

Map View of a Qiqo Conversation
Example “Map View” of a written conversation on Qiqo.

Quick Start Guide

You can turn on the “conversations” tool for your circle.  When you are creating a circle, click “More Options” >> “Show/Hide Features & Tools” >> “Conversations”  and then select “Enable”.

Once your circle is created, a link to your conversations will show menu at the top of your circle.  From there, click the green button to create a new conversation.

Setting the conditions for an effective online group conversation takes a bit of thinking.  We recommend dividing your conversation into separate topics, each of which you can post like this:

Add new topic to a Qiqo conversation
Adding new topics is easy.

Optional Features

Each participant can customize their own email notifications, based on specific keywords.  They can also subscribe to just the new topics, any individual topic, or the firehose of all new topics and replies.

When editing your conversation, click “More Options” for these features:

  • As the creator of a conversation, you can set the “conversation email address” which gives participants the ability to send in new topics directly from email.
  • You can add a YouTube video to welcome participants and explain what you’d like to see happen.

Tips & Tricks

Start a written conversation prior to a live event so that everyone can begin thinking about the topic ahead of time.  You can then embed the conversation directly into the live event.  When you are editing your event, see the section with this text: “Qiqo provides a notes page for every breakout. To replace the default notes with Google Docs (or some other tool), paste the links here.”

Advanced Options:

You can use a written conversation on Qiqo in concert with an existing listserv, Google Group, or email discussion forum.  First set the conversation email address for your circle.  Then subscribe that email address to the listserv / Google Group / email discussion forum.  When a new topic or reply is posted, it will show up in your Qiqo conversation.

Alternatively, you could create a new QiqoChat account with the email address of your existing listserv (don’t do both, or you’ll get an endless loop of emails!).  Then subscribe that QiqoChat user to notifications from one or more written conversations on Qiqo (daily summaries are recommended so regular listserv subscribers do not complain about receiving too many emails).

More Info

Here is the Qiqo User Guide.