Facilitation Lab: Prototyping our Community

Douglas Ferguson

In April, we gathered you to listen and discuss how the community might evolve. We invited each one of you, our valued community members, to share your thoughts, ideas, and aspirations for the future of our community. The event, “Designing Our Community,” was a success, not just in turnout but in the depth and breadth of feedback we received.
Taking each voice into account, our team has worked diligently over the past few months to shape, mold, and refine the ideas brought forth. And now, we’re thrilled to shared and collect feedback on a prototype that captures our renewed vision and the tangible changes we’ve curated from all in response to your feedback.
We welcome you to join us to explore how we evolve the community together.

Date

September 21, 2023

Time

1pm - 3pm CT​

Location

Live Online

This event is happening again!

You should join us on October 17

Get Tickets

Interested in a private cohort for your team?

What to expect

What to Expect

We offer opportunities for facilitators to gather in a safe judgement-free zone to learn from experts and one another. Our community offers many levels of engagement and exclusive resources for facilitators, whether you are a beginner or a Master Facilitator. Our weekly Facilitation Lab makes up 5 key segments: impromptu networking, our guest facilitator session activity, community critique, a weekly giveaway, & After Hours. Come & network with facilitators from around the globe and expand your facilitator toolbelt from each Lab experience!

What You'll Learn

Ever left a session and remembered all the content of all the sticky notes? Nope, most of us don’t. Ever left a session and remembered a few key concepts the group had named? “Hmmm, should we try out ‘The Big Swing’ or ‘The Guaranteed Garden’?” Organizing, and then naming concepts is a key facilitator skill. We use it to kick-start sense-making, enable strategic decisions, and leverage playful engagement. In this workshop, you’ll tease apart the foundational elements: narratives and taxonomies in order to deepen your logic modeling craft. You’ll also practice naming the contents of a logic model and reflect on when in your work you apply this method.

How You'll Learn

The workshop will be activity-based with facilitation simulations and collaborative sessions. You’ll recognize, practice, and design your workshops based on key learning experience design principles. We won’t just talk at you — you’ll learn through doing, work with other participants, and get feedback. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, so you can learn in real-time from a master facilitator with tons of experience running hundreds of workshops at some of the world’s largest institutions and enterprises.

Agenda

Impromptu Networking

Engage with everyone in the community during a quick round of introductions to network and begin our time together

Guest Facilitator Session

Experience the lead facilitator's activity & method to engage together as a community.

Rose, Thorn, Bud Critique

Share your feedback as a community and offer expressions of tangible takeaways to our lead facilitator.

After Hours

Stay awhile & chat post-session about your experience in the Lab.

Who Should Attend

Team Managers & Leads

who want to learn more & benefit from the power of facilitation practice

UX Designers

who want to expand their facilitation skillset while gaining inspiration of new approaches

Experienced & New Facilitators

who want to level up their facilitation skills and enhance their facilitation tool belt

Teachers

who want to gain feedback & uncover new resources with forward-thinking activities

Key Takeaways

Discover what withholds are getting in the way of your life, career, and intimacy

Learn how to transform a Raw Withhold into a Skilled Withhold

Get a peek into the most advanced conscious communication skills training available

Practice a facilitation skill to have a room of crickets speak up

This event has ended

Interested in hearing when this workshop will occur next?

Douglas Ferguson

Douglas is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 26 years of experience. He is president of Voltage Control, a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. He has helped transform leaders, innovators, and creatives from Nike, U.S. SOCOM, Google, the Air Force, Gap, Tesla, MSU, Church & Dwight, Apple, Adobe, Dropbox, Fidelity, Vrbo, Liberty Mutual, Humana, and SAIC.

Prior to Voltage Control, Douglas held CTO positions at numerous Austin startups, where he led product and engineering teams using agile, lean, and human-centered design principles. While CTO at Twyla, Douglas worked directly with Google Ventures running Design Sprints, and now brings this experience and process to companies everywhere.

Douglas is currently active in the Austin startup community, where he serves on the board of several non-profits, mentors startups, and advises early-stage ventures.
What People Are Saying

"I always enjoy the opportunity to network with other facilitators in the Facilitation Lab. I've gained so much knowledge from other attendees' insights & experiences each and every week in our community."

Anonymous

Facilitation Lab Attendee

Apply for a Diversity Scholarship

A key part of our mission is to support diverse facilitators from different methodologies, backgrounds, races, genders, sexual orientations, cultures, and ages. If you are a part of, or serve, a traditionally underrepresented group and feel that this scholarship would allow you to amplify this mission, please apply now.

Photo Disclaimer

Please note that photographs, video & audio recordings will be taken throughout this event. These will be used by Voltage Control for marketing and publicity in our publications, on our website and in social media, or in any third-party publication. Please contact us via email if you have any concerns or if you wish to be exempted from this activity.​

The Books

Bring Your Ideas to Life

Innovation can seem complex or reserved for the exceptional. But we believe innovation is for everyone. We’ve set out to illuminate a path for you to generate bold ideas, visualize and share them, overcome obstacles, and turn them into reality. Our books are equal parts guidebook and stories from years of experience helping companies adopt an innovation mindset and culture. They’re practical & actionable, so you can get started now. We hope they’ll help you on your journey to realizing your biggest, boldest ideas.