Over the past year, teams around the world sought new ways to collaborate, engage, and connect. Most of us have been trying to figure out how to translate the mainstays of our company’s in-person collaboration and planning — kickoffs, offsites, training, brainstorming — into virtual events. Underlying this process is the assumption that a virtual experience is less valuable, that it’s missing something that only in-person events can offer. But maybe that’s not true.

In Kenya, countless communities rely upon small vendors called Mama Mbogas (which literally means Mama Vegetables) to bring fresh food into their neighborhoods. Mama Mbogas operate small food stands in cities and rural communities and play a vital role in distributing produce from farmers to consumers. Despite their importance, Mama Mbogas have historically faced immense challenges in running their businesses.

At Blue Label Labs, we stand by select products like Miro because of their ability to enrich processes and furnish visual, collaborative tools that make our lives easier. We love using Slack for our day-to-day communications, but when it comes to intensive events like running design sprints, Miro is the centerpiece that brings our efforts together. It’s an excellent product, but it shines even brighter when effectively using plugins like Jira, which we will cover here.

An educator has one primary goal: to help their students comprehend the concepts that are taught. It’s a tough job, particularly when students have different learning styles and levels of understanding. That’s where concept maps come in handy. These visual learning tools show the relationships between different ideas so that students can work through them and better grasp how they’re connected.

When I first joined Miro, less than a year ago, we had 3 million users and around 300 employees. A lot has changed since then. We have since grown to approximately 15 million users and 700 employees, making Miro one of the fastest-growing B2B startups in history. With such hyper-growth, there’s an ever-growing need to scale the way we do product. In this article, I’ll walk through the approach that I introduced at Miro a while ago and is currently at the heart of our product strategy.

Planning to revamp your website, organize a charity drive, or maybe a spring picnic with friends? According to PMI the success of your project is highly dependent on the planning stage. Research shows a strong correlation between planning and success, even when spending as little as only 20% of your time on planning. Spending that extra time in the beginning to prepare for anyl possible scenario could save your picnic from the rain and your project from derailing.

If you’ve participated in a workshop, conference, or brainstorm, then you’ve probably experienced a breakout session. That’s when the meeting facilitator divides up participants into smaller groups to privately discuss a topic. When done correctly, breakout sessions are an excellent opportunity to have candid conversations and connect with other participants on a more intimate level than a broader meeting allows.

A concept map is a diagram that shows relationships between different ideas, and it’s a useful tool for organizing your thoughts and understanding the nitty-gritty of a specific topic. Sounds helpful, doesn’t it? That brings you to this question: how do you make one? These maps are flexible and can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be. Below, let’s dig into everything you need to know about how to make a concept map.

We’re in the midst of a collaboration renaissance. The global shift to remote work has forced many companies to rethink how teams collaborate. In the absence of habits and best practices that we used to take for granted, everyone is looking for new ways to connect, innovate, and get work done. For product development teams, that has been a huge challenge — and a huge opportunity.

Think about something that’s seemingly simple — like a sandwich, for instance. It seems straightforward enough, right? But now, push yourself to start thinking about everything that relates to a sandwich. What ingredients are used to make it? Who eats sandwiches? How are they made? Suddenly you’re bursting with all sorts of topics related to sandwiches, but there’s no rhyme or reason for how those different ideas are related to one another.