That low tech, often abused thing in the corner, the flipchart, is your most important tool, and your best friend in facilitation. I often say I would pay facilitators based on two things - and one of these is how much they work to get information to be vertical and visible.

Vertical - Most meetings have everyone looking at their own papers in front of them horizontally on the table. No-one really knows what everyone else is looking at or reading. When a decision is made, or a resolution is reached, there will be some who are not quite sure what was just said. The facilitator's job is to bring everyone's attention to where the action is - and that's on the flipchart.

Visible - For the flipchart to work, people have to see it! You need to think about your room layout, but more importantly, your skill in writing on a vertical surface (which takes practice), and the techniques associated with charting. Your writing has to be legible, and it's much better to develop a way of working in capitals that is reasonably quick, than to rely on your normal handwriting.

Creating Effective Flipcharts

Because the flipchart is your most important tool, make sure you can actually use it. I always, always take my own flipchart pens, by the way. You will not be able to give the service you're there for, if your pens don't work. Blue and black are, without doubt, the colours to work with for text. Red and green are great for emphasis and highlighting. Those are all the colours you need for your job.

I used to be astounded how often people wrote in red and green, then I realised that they were the colours always left behind in meeting rooms - because the black and blue had been used. These colours do not, repeat do not, work for text. They are generally less visible against white from a distance than black and blue, and some people (particularly men) have difficulty distinguishing red and green from each other, and from black or grey.

Intellectual Property

You are using the flipchart to write up what people have said or proposed or thought. This is their property. When people see their words on the vertical and visible surface, they feel a connection to the meeting and its process. Those words belong to them. This is a fundamental principle for all facilitators, so treat them as anybody else's property you have been asked to look after. Your care in capturing exactly what they said, reflects your respect. Never cross out contributions, unless you have been specifically told to do so by the author. If there's general disagreement from others, I use brackets or a question mark, so it stays there, but is marked as "under discussion".

Flipcharts as Group Memory

Part of your job is to help the group's memory, and that works best with a structure and pointers to help recall. Breaks in the meeting are for participants to relax - not you. One of your jobs in the breaks, is to mark the flipcharts with things which will help recall, and to display them in a logical order, if they are likely to be referred to in some way later. Titles, numbers and dates in the top right hand corner, all help you and the group to recapture the essence much more quickly.

So - lots of flexibility, no bulbs to worry about, no electrical cables, no noise from cooling fans just some care and attention from you and you'll provide a great service to the team or group as you drastically improve the way they do meetings. Oh - and of course you can photograph the sheets at the end on your phone or digital camera and then no writing up minutes and action points either.