I purchased these about a year ago. Anyone else use these to map out their workshops? If so, what do you think of them?

Hi All, I am going through the material and I'm wondering if there are any opportunities to shadow or sit in on a real workshop so I can observe and learn first hand? I find that that is the best way for me to learn and contextualize all of the information. Thanks!

Hey guys I wanted to ask you : what’s your key(s)to growth personally or professionally ? Can’t wait for your answers 😁

Hello facilitators! I'm looking for recommendations on improving speaking and communication skills, which I believe are essential to any job and especially to facilitation. In particular, I'm interested in learning: - How to make interventions concise and clear - How to engage the audience and make a lasting impression - How to discern the appropriate timing for interventions particularly in meeting/workshop settings. Any tips or resources you can share would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Hi everyone! As someone from an education background, I found observations incredibly useful to be able to see what I've learned in action, and it got me wondering whether observing a workshop or facilitation session is a thing. Is it a done thing? I know it's something I'd massively benefit from, and would love an opportunity to see a facilitator in action in order to tie things together visually. I'd love thoughts from experienced facilitators who pivoted into facilitation from another industry/career path.

During workshops, Sometimes i experience a sense of losing control over the process / participants. I'm interested in hearing about how you handle such a situation.

Hi, everyone! I'm on the tail end of the AJ&Smart Facilitation Fundamentals programme, and have loved every part of it and would like to dive into facilitation by seeing it in action. I'd love to volunteer to co-facilitate a session for anyone who'd benefit from the support and I'd be able to have more of a hands-on/experiential insight into facilitation. If you're looking for a tech-savvy people-person, I'm your woman. 😁 I'm open to gaining as much co-facilitation as possible remotely or in locations close to London, UK.

Long post: Looking for people using Workshopper in these fields. I'm launching my new business and have a background in public health, education and fundraising. The bulk of my fundraising is in grant writing, which is something that is much desired in my region. I do want to extend beyond my region, but have some great client potential as I transition. They WANT fundraising and a grant writing, which I want to support primarily through project development, collaboration and consulting. I don't want to write the grants for them, but with a strong project think that any group is better situated for finding. Often people find the a grant, make up a project and submit it without much planning or thought. I know that planning a project then finding a grant that fits the project is a much better approach for the organization and the project. Anyone else use workshopper in this way? Anyone else in education, public health or the nonprofit sectors?

I will be in Berlin April 4th afternoon till April 6th around lunchtime. Anyone in the neighborhood by accident?

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." - Bruce Lee Imagine you could pick a single workshop exercise to truly master - and do it 10,000 times. Which one would it be - and why?

I was off to India, New Delhi for training, just missed interacting with you guys,every post and every comment is a new learning, from the other side I managed to network with people from over 20 countries which was amaaaaazing experience :) :) :) Now I back to learning with you :) :) :)

ChatGPT can save you and your team time and energy on each day of the sprint! Give these prompts a try on ChatGPT: - List the main pain points of (specific target user) in (specific industry)  - Generate 10 ideas for a new feature on (specific product/service) or brainstorm potential solutions to improve (specific aspect) on (specific product/service)  - Create a script for a lightning demo of the (specific idea)  - Create a script for a (specific type of prototype) of (specific idea)  - Create a user testing script for (specific prototype)  I tried these prompts on AJ&smart's well-known and thrilling example, Jack's Laundry Services 😂, and they were a success. Happy sprinting!

I was wondering if you (all) could share what specific fields, or industries (types of businesses), your clients are in? I think it might be useful for new Facilitators to home-in on specific areas for their marketing... Cheers, James

After going through couple of videos from @Aj Smart youtube channel, I feel learning to facilitate is really going to help me in my career as a UX/UI Designer. But my question is where can I learn about it? Where can I learn those tricks, where can I learn to build a 'robust' toolkit?, etc. You know the internet is an ocean of knowledge, but I can't read/study everything, so if you know any resources to follow please let me know.

How do you make your slides/whiteboards look really professional & not too "home-made"? I find the Designer function in powerpoint is very helpful, but it doesn't always work for slides that are more complex than simple text & pictures. What other options are there to improve slides? I have pretty good ppt skills but I do want to be a team coach not a graphic designer :-)

Hi all! I've already found so much helpful content in this community, so I thought I'd come to you with something I've been struggling with. I started my career at IBM where I was first introduced to Design Thinking. I got a couple of certifications and facilitated a few workshops and found it very valuable. However, over the last couple of years I started breaking away from traditional Design Thinking workshops and designing/facilitating different flavors of workshops. Sometimes those workshops used activities commonly associated with Design Thinking (like empathy maps), but other times the workshops were totally different from what I would define as traditional Design Thinking (like LDJs). I've recently started my own small business with a partner focusing on workshop design and facilitation. A lot of our clients want to put us in the Design Thinking box, but we want to convey that workshops can be so much more than that. Have you all experienced workshops always being conflated with Design Thinking, and if so how do you explain the connections but also the differences?

I'm facilitating my first discovery workshop as part of a new flagship mobile application we are adding to our existing desktop product stack (needless to say I really need this workshop to deliver some results) I have been given the option of having it either remotely or in office, bearing in mind we have colleagues working in different parts of the world. Remote might save the company some money but in office might yield better results - I'm not sure. I'm curious to hear your thoughts?

I remember hearing how Jonathan Courtney extracts workshops from books. Sprint, as a book about Sprint workshops, is an obvious example. What I'd like to do is create a generic methodology/workshop for doing this transformation systematically. The idea outcome would be workshops/workflows that speed up attaining nrew skills and utcomes What steps could I use to read and process a book, or only part of it, and turn into a practical workshop...and what underlying principles shoud I comsider? Say. take Atomic Habits and turn it into a Habit Design workshop, or Effective Data Storytelling Brent Dykes) and turn it into a Data Story Workshop(s) that transforms research raw data into a data story. Got any thoughts, methods, mindsets?

so what do you think about the role of Entrepreneurship in Project Management? share your opinion

As more and more workshops and meetings are being held online, it's important to understand the unique challenges and opportunities that come with virtual facilitation. I have found that one of my best practices for virtual facilitation is to create a structured agenda and to stick to it. I also make sure to use interactive tools such as breakout rooms and polls to keep my audience engaged. Another tip that I follow is to actively monitor and manage group dynamics, as it can be more challenging to read the room when working remotely. From building engagement to managing distractions, how do you ensure your virtual workshops are productive and effective? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below and let's start a conversation about virtual facilitation best practices.

Hi guys, hoping to draw on some of your experience. I'm new to facilitation and learning the design sprint. I'm doing well at talking about the design sprint and there seems to be some buy-in. However, our organization is highly technical (some seriously big brains) and we have an internal set up called "Digital Factory" which they are using for acceleration of transformation. Admittedly, focused on the digital aspect. They are using agile sprints. My question: What is the real difference between a design sprint and an agile sprint? And how can I highlight to my colleagues that it could be worth doing design sprints up front in the innovation process? I do understand that agile is more of a downstream process. So, I guess, does anyone have experience with what teams start from in an agile setting? Use cases for example... Looking forward to your comments / thoughts. Thanks

You're probably (hopefully!) already convinced about the value a Facilitator can bring, BUT one of the biggest issues we see people in our communities face is explaining this value to others (clients, their team/boss, etc) AND explaining what a Facilitator actually does! The video linked below should help you clearly describe what a Facilitator actually does, and this thread from @Rebecca Courtney has some really interesting insights about the value of facilitation!

Hey Facilitators, I would like to hear your opinion. 3hrs online workshop 200+ attendees (corpo client) with a "basic level of knowledge" Goal: - To Embrace DT as a problem-solving tool that attendees can apply - To experience DT through exercises in a limited amount of time.  (To show ---------- To explain and put theoretical knowledge about DT is clear. Question: What do you think is the best exercise to experience DT (90min max)? - I was thinking about the Stanford model to work in pairs in breakout rooms. - I was also thinking to go with LDJ - but it's risky (need to "onboard" multiple facilitators inside groups) What exercise would you choose?

One of the great things about what we do is you can do it as an employee or go out and become your own company. Whilst the later comes with amazing benefits there are a lot of areas that need to be considers… Like - What does it take to set myself up as a business or do I just contract in. - If I am setting myself up as a business am I a sole trader.. registering by business - Defining your purpose and setting clear goals yearly, quarterly - Defining your target customers, products, services and financials. Whilst this is a passion space for a lot of us, you still need to understand your revenue needs. - Branding and marketing - What do you need to set yourself up… physically, technology - Contracts for engagements - How to build a pipeline, managing you customer base Making sure you get work life balance! Would be interested in hearing and learning from each other on what made sense for you and what you would like to share with the rest of the community…

Howdy! For those of you here who are freelance facilitators, I have two questions: - What's been the most effective method of getting clients? - What kinds of workshops/sessions do you sell the most? I'll go first: - What's been the most effective method of getting clients? --> Creating Youtube content - What kinds of workshops/sessions do you sell the most? --> Innovation Workshops Cheers, Jonathan

Facilitation is very unique skill as every individual has their own way of presenting, teaching, communicating and leading discussions. It's not like a standard process where you just copy anyone and do the same. However, the quality is very important so as to make it impactful and memorable experience. ✨ So, as a group of professional facilitators in various domains - Have you ever tried measuring your facilitation performance?🤔 If yes, what are the ways you have tried it ? I understand surveys are one of best methods to get the feedbacks but apart from that what other approaches makes it beneficial? In case you think measuring or assessing is not that important aspect, do share your thoughts why you feel so 😊 Looking forward to know views on this topic !

Hello Workshoppers! I wanted to use the 'Scoping Workshop' board, but the Dropbox link appears to be broken. Is there an updated link or workaround? Please advise. Thanks, Greg @Rebecca Courtney

Great week to everyone! A little bit of context: I have been working as a Business Manager for a while and the most important soft skill that I developed is - Adaptation - I been working in three different markets (Chile, Australia and USA) to finally "ending" this long trip in the heart of the UE (Belgium). Too much blabla? Well, in resume I found myself in this new developed market where IT Methodologies and coordinate working groups are a must. As usual, the bottleneck is how to incorporate new knowledge fast as possible and how I can convert this knowledge in value, In this search for more knowledge I found the Facilitator Club and now I'm eager to learn more about your experiences: General question: What industries have you worked in? How has the adaptation process been in each of them? Have you had to adapt to a new language and/or organizational cultures? A bit more specific: Do any of the facilitators have experience with IT companies? How did you adapted your skills in this industry? What would be your recommendations to be able to join this sector? In my case, I learn by sharing my experiences and analyzing real cases, also in order to learn more quickly, ChatGPT has helped me a lot this last days. 👾 Cheers to all, Michael

Hi everyone! Just thought to see if there are any coaches in this group - I think it'd be nice to feel connected! As someone who's passionate in both coaching and facilitation, I see a lot of link between the two skills - especially listening, partnering, asking questions and reflecting back. Does anyone else find the two skills linked? A bit about me: I did my coach training with Damian Goldvarg and I'm on my way to get accredited as Associate Certified Coach by ICF this year. Would love to connect with other coaches here!

Let's accept it - workshops not always go as planned, and we are always dealing with 'oh-no' situations (at least me!) So I thought to share and also learn from everyone's failures but with the mindset of 'failing forward' - every mistake can turn into a stepping stone for success in the future. I'll start with one learning from this week, and I'd love to hear your lessons learnt too! [plan] In an online workshop where participants from various countries were expected, I did an ice-breaking exercise where I shared a screen of a white world map and asked colleagues to put a stamp on where they are at the moment. [what happened] it took forever for some participants to find out how to stamp and annotate on zoom, while some got it immediately. So it wasn't smooth. Lots of scribbles on the white board too. And, actually majority of them were from the same countries so the activity didn't really serve the purpose of showing the diversity of participants. It fell flat and made it a not-so-cool start of the workshop. [lessons] - keep the technology super simple, especially if you aren't sure of the level of familiarity - have some back-up questions/activities, in case one question didn't spark interest,