Session Design

Which format is best for your next convening? On March 24th, 2022, Six session designers convened virtually to talk about the pros and cons of the different session formats we now have to choose from: virtual, in real life (IRL) and hybrids (a mixture of both).  The session included Tanya […]

Virtual vs IRL vs Hybrid

The Session Design Canvas is for anyone who has attended the Virtual Session Design Lab, An Online Facilitator Coaching Session, or has read ‘Tips for Designing an Effective Workshop Session’. It assumes a familiarity with Malcolm S. Knowles Adult Learning Theories and ADIDS as a workshop format.  This canvas has […]

The Session Design Canvas V 1.0

Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve run over one hundred virtual sessions, and dozens of virtual events, interacting with thousands of participants. Here are six things I’ve learned along the way. Three things I’ve learned about tech: Keep the tech simple. Only use the tools you need. For example, […]

Six things I’ve learned about virtual sessions

Before diving into 2021, I’m taking a moment to reflect and capture what happened in the world of FabRiders in 2020. What I did In 2020, I supported over 80 virtual convenings, collaborating with more than a dozen organisations in 2020. I led over 60 of those, meaning I designed […]

FabRiders’ 2020

Content & Logistics Come Last To have a successful convening, you need to stay focused on how the outcomes will serve your long-term goals, and on the most critical element, your participants. It’s the experience that participants have and how they contribute their expertise and perspectives. Your event design must […]

Weeknotes for November 27th, 2020

Articulating the Big Picture In my rich fantasy life, everyone who works for a social change organisation can map every task in front of them on a journey to achieving a vision of success. This implies that every social change has a vision of success, and their strategies and tactics […]

Weeknotes for November 6th, 2020

The Virtual Session Design Canvas is out of Beta! Please use V1 The Virtual Session Design Canvas is for anyone who has attended the Virtual Session Design Lab, An Online Facilitator Coaching Session, or has read ‘Tips for Designing an Effective Workshop Session’. It assumes a familiarity with Malcolm S. […]

The Virtual Session Design Canvas (Beta)

Caught up with online discussion outputs, prepped for upcoming workshops, ran another (Virtual) lab and announced a new lab offering. Right before getting stuck into the Climate:Red summit, we ran a Network-Centric Resources Online Discussion where a group of knowledge-asset resource designers co-created a best practices list on co-creation. This […]

Weeknotes for Sept 25th, 2020

This week I learned a hell of a lot about RightsCon, the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age. I started the week with the goal of learning about what makes an effective RightsCon session. I managed to get to 15 sessions, one side group meetup and […]

Weeknotes for July 31st, 2020

Rethinking a Festival Finished a series of four workshops to help the Institute for Economic Justice adjust the Rethinking Economics for Africa Festival online. We created stakeholder journeys – mapping out the experience before, during and after the virtual Festival. We then established the various roles and guides that would […]

WeekNotes for July 24th, 2020

Things I was grateful for this week: RightsCon & TechChange Teams This week, I started working with the RightsCon & TechChange teams on providing support to facilitators who will be delivering virtual sessions for RightsCon‘s first online convening from July 27th to 31st. The first task was adding guidance to […]

Weeknotes for July 10th 2020

Breathing again with a focus on reflecting and planning. Reflecting Mor Rubinstein and I hosted a ‘social lunch’ for members of this 360Giving Data Champions Cohort as we wrap up this year’s programme. We also did a reflection on this year’s cohort with Mor getting us to respond to four […]

Weeknotes for June 19th, 2020

On Monday, as part of IFRC’s Solferino Academy,  Laurent Fernandez, and I ran a ‘How to use Zoom’ Skillshare for National Societies in the Americas. We broke the participants up into small groups to discuss their challenges and generate a list of questions in a google doc. We then spent […]

Weeknotes for May 8th, 2020

Thanks to Heather Leson, I managed to join a meeting to share our experiences running large virtual workshops for IFRC’s Solferino Academy with staff from Zoom. The Zoom representatives explained how they have frozen developing features for the app for the last 90 days as they focused on improving security. […]

Weeknotes for May 1st, 2020

At Aspiration’s Non-Profit Developer Summit in November 2019, I attended a workshop on Facilitative Leadership run by Misty Avila. What struck me about the session was how Misty walked the walk, demonstrating the power of facilitative leadership through the session design, providing structure and scaffolding for participants to share and […]

Recipes for Facilitative Leadership – a workshop session design