Today I am breaking my own writing format to share something special: I am speaking at the Remote Design Week tomorrow.
I am facilitating a workshop: Unblocking Asynchronous Creativity. I will be sharing my journey learning about facilitation and the shift to remote and asynchronous ways of working.
Preet, the conference organiser, freaked me out. He said that there will be probably more than 200 people attending. I know how to navigate the Dunning-Kruger rollercoaster, but I confess I am bit nervous.
Not because of the crowd. I have delivered keynotes to hundreds of people before, but in Portuguese. And this will not be my first gig speaking in English to a big audience. Last year I talked about Design Operations at the first DesignOps Assembly event in London. And the year before, when we used to gather in real life, I was invited for two Design Leadership panels by the kind folks from Clearleft. It was packed, and I think it went fine.
But this is the first time I am sharing something I am not so confident in my skills: Asynchronous ways of working. I work remotely for years now, but async is a new game. And while I was researching for the talk I could not find a lot of information about this. But with or without the anxiety, I am doing this. Impostor syndrome and stage fright: bugger off, you are not welcome. Something that makes smile is that my brilliant partner, Leiliane, is gonna be one of my co-facilitators. She has this ability of calming me.
Yesterday we run the beta version of the workshop. I had the privilege of having some cool cats from my team at Farfetch, a few friends and the part of DEX01 team attending. It was great because now I know exactly what to change. I failed miserably with tooling and the timing was not right, so I have to edit myself.
I haven’t finished the workshop design and the talk yet. But I decided to write today and share this post as a Goodie Bag with a thank you note for the nice people that helped me yesterday.
The five people bellow inspired me for this talk. They not only deserve the credit, but my gratitide. I had the opportunity to learn with them because they all work in the opne, creating valuable content.
Alison Coward permalink
Alison’s work is focused on finding the balance between creativity, productivity and collaboration. Her Messy Middle framework clarifies the complexity of creating good workshops. A Pocket Guide To Effective Workshops was the first book I bought about the topic. And she was the one that inspired me to learn about facilitation.
Goodie: She created a free assessment tool so you can understand your team collaboration practices.
Priya Parker permalink
Author of the classic book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, Pryia also hosts the podcast Together Apart. She is a pioneer in the field, and her work explores what makes remarkable gatherings.
Goodie: She recently created a free guide that updates her book to the hybrid era
Daniel Stillman permalink
Conversation Designer, speaker and facilitator, Daniel recently wrote Good Talk - How to Design Conversations that matter. His Conversation OS Canvas helped me to think about the components of a good conversation. His human approach to facilitation is unique. Daniel changed my life last year when I attended one of his facilitation labs. I have a stick note in my office with something he said that resonates with me every day.
Goodie: His newsletter is just great. You get access to a treasure trove of tools and information. The facilitator hats series is fun and insightful.
Anamaria Borgo permalink
She is the Head of Community at Butter. Butter is my fave facilitation tool and the right thing to do if you are not stuck in Zoom, Bluejeans or Google Meet for compliance reasons. I was a beta-tester and this is how I met Anamaria. She works on the intersection of learning, community management and facilitation. I recently joined two incredible communities of practice where she shows her magic every day: L&D Shakers and Butter Community.
Goodie: Butter Community is definitely the place to be if you want to improve your facilitation skills for free.
Dr Myriam Hadnes permalink
Founder of the dutch consultancy workshops.work, Dr Myriam hosts an incredible podcast. Episode #1, about Human Connection, inspired the part of my talk that I like most.
Goodie: This beautiful map of all podcast episodes and related facilitation techniques and questions.
You should definitely follow all of them. Later on, I will extend this list.
And if you want to know more about tools, I highly recommend this article by the folks at Session Lab.