I co-facilitated a full-day, off-site retreat for a company (comprised of nine team members) yesterday. All in all, it went really well. However, the one tricky thing was having to continually tamp down the urge from the team to venture into free-for-all discussion land. I kept feeling like I was the "time sheriff," cutting folks off who wanted to open the floor for group discussion. Any advice on how to allow for some discussion but still keep things tight and on track? Note: We set expectations at the start of the workshop... explaining the concept of "work together, alone," noting that we'd be moving quickly, and showing them/using the time timer.

My first experience taught me valuable lessons. With better preparation, I could have enhanced the workshop's impact and opened doors to more opportunities with larger companies. If you'd like to learn more, please don't hesitate to reach out. This was my first workshop, and it featured major companies like Google/Waze, the Los Angeles Transportation Department, Super73 Inc., BLADE, and Lyft. Despite its success, I felt nervous and unqualified to lead an event with industry giants. Workshop: Interactive Mobility Collaboration in Los Angeles Pros: - Over 100+ attendees, executives, engineers, designers, city officials - Influential industry leaders participated. - Held at Google Campus in Venice Beach, LA. - Generated innovative solutions to address challenges. Cons: - Lack of backup challenges in case not all five were generated (by design). - Workshop couldn't be completed due to time constraints imposed by Google's policies. - Difficulty in synthesizing the collected data, leaving the challenge results incomplete. - Limited ongoing connections with participants, suggesting room for improvement in event management. Event Page https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-west-los-angeles-presents-startup-grind-google-an-interactive-group-collaboration-on-mobility-in-los-angeles/

Hey everyone, and thanks for having me here. I'm excited about this community and how we can share and learn from each other. I'm a firm believer in the “tide lifting all boats”, and I want to thank AJ&Smart for sharing so much of their expertise. It's a true game changer for the industry. A few words about me: I have a background in journalism and political speech writing at top-government level before deciding to focus on human growth and mental health in organizations, as well as on the individual level. I have been doing it in various ways for 15 years now and have experimented a lot. Probably too much, but it's part of who I am to explore the next frontier (it's sooo tempting… not always wise, though…). I believe facilitation is the next-big-thing in human thinking, but I have to admit I didn't see the full scale and impact of it, until I came across AJ&Smart, so I'm here to learn as much as I can.

Hi, I am very green on facilitation and I am looking for some recommendations to add to my reading list- you can never learn enough right?!

Hey all! I chuckled this week hearing Jonathan refer to affinitizing as fancy-company speak, but the more I facilitate the more I'm finding a nuance between the two that make a great deal of impact on my applications. I define the difference currently as: - Clustering attempts to just make the data more visible / neater - Affinitizing attempts to find hidden connections and deeper meaning. But I'm curious... How do you all think of clustering?