Caveat that this review is at the very beginning of my journey with Sidebar - I have literally only completed the first group meeting as of 02 June 2023. However, I joined a different group designed for women in late 2020 that I was a little disappointed with. I can already see HUGE advantages in Sidebar's approach, particularly with the tech supports.
Most exciting to me was the meeting experience! They are using a bespoke solution inside of their community and at the top it has this outline of the meeting agenda with planned time for each activity. In real time a little gauge is moving across to show everyone where we are now and how much time is left for that activity. Like, WOW! I want this for ALL of my meetings! On the human side, our facilitator was phenomenal! In the other group I had joined we were each "taught" to facilitate and took turns throughout the year. That had very mixed results and Sidebar's dedicated group facilitators was actually a key reason I was willing to try this concept again. Chase did not disappoint - he's amazing! The Sidebar team clearly has a good process on the human side of things too.
I was also impressed that once I was matched to a group a special space opened up for us where we could clearly see the milestones for the entire journey ahead and link to materials already made available to us. There were also all of the standard features whereby I could see the group members and our group chat, open new chats with 1 or more members, control notifications, etc.
Overall we're off to a strong start and I am truly looking forward to the journey ahead. I'll be sure to update this review as I become more familiar with Sidebar and their complete offering.
