Facilitation Lab
Facilitation Lab Dallas
Practice Playground
With Douglas Ferguson and Alison Coward
In Partnership With Work214
May 23, 2024
6pm - 8pm CDT
A dynamic space dedicated to facilitators seeking to refine and enhance their skills in a hands-on, interactive practice environment.
At Practice Playground, facilitators come together to explore, experiment, and evolve their craft. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the field, this lab offers an unparalleled opportunity to practice in real-time, receive constructive feedback, and learn from peers.
Come prepared to practice a variety of facilitation techniques, from traditional methods to cutting-edge approaches. The environment is designed to be safe, supportive, and conducive to growth, allowing you to try new strategies, fine-tune your skills, and gain confidence in your facilitation abilities.
This month’s meetup is especially unique because Allison Coward, a Facilitation Lab member from London, is in town and will be giving away a few copies of her new book Collaboration Culture.
At Practice Playground, facilitators come together to explore, experiment, and evolve their craft. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the field, this lab offers an unparalleled opportunity to practice in real-time, receive constructive feedback, and learn from peers.
Come prepared to practice a variety of facilitation techniques, from traditional methods to cutting-edge approaches. The environment is designed to be safe, supportive, and conducive to growth, allowing you to try new strategies, fine-tune your skills, and gain confidence in your facilitation abilities.
This month’s meetup is especially unique because Allison Coward, a Facilitation Lab member from London, is in town and will be giving away a few copies of her new book Collaboration Culture.
May 23, 2024
6pm - 8pm CDT
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About Facilitation Lab Dallas
Facilitation Lab Dallas is a meetup focused on helping facilitators & collaborative leaders connect with peers in a supportive and inspiring facilitation playground.
We gather to experience and explore all aspects of facilitation, including Liberating Structures, Game Storming, Thinking Wrong, MG Taylor, Improv, and much more.
At each meeting, we rotate topics and approaches, from highlighting practitioners sharing tips and tricks to open facilitation practice where you get hands-on with new tools and concepts.
In addition to Facilitation Lab Dallas hosted by J, there are meetups around the globe hosted by Facilitation Lab regional leads. See the region list for a full list of all active meetups.
Join the Facilitation Lab Community Hub to connect asynchronously with the facilitation community and get reminders of all upcoming events.
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
Experienced & New Facilitators
Who want to level up their facilitation skills and enhance their facilitation tool belt
Chiefs of Staff
Who want to align and support initiatives across departments
Product & Project Managers
Who want to steer stakeholders to the best outcomes
Teachers & Trainers
Who want to design the most impactful learning
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
Featured Facilitators
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.
Douglas is a thought leader and often writes and talks about facilitation, leadership, collaboration, innovation, culture, meetings, and Design Sprints. He is also the author of four books: Magical Meetings, Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything, and Start Within, He has been published in Forbes, Fast Company, Innovation Leader, and is a regular contributor to The Future Shapers. He publishes a weekly podcast called Facilitation Lab.
When not facilitating or coaching facilitators, you might find Douglas patching up his Modular Synth, boxing, doing pilates, and taking photographs. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Douglas is a thought leader and master facilitator of Design Sprints, Innovation Acceleration, Team Alignment, Meeting Systems, Culture Transitions, and Change Transformations. He is also the author of four books: Magical Meetings, Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything, and Start Within, He has been published in Forbes, Fast Company, Innovation Leader, and is a regular contributor to The Future Shapers. He publishes a weekly podcast called Control the Room.
When not facilitating or coaching facilitators you might find Douglas patching up his Modular Synth, boxing, doing pilates, and taking photographs. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
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.
Douglas is a thought leader and often writes and talks about facilitation, leadership, collaboration, innovation, culture, meetings, and Design Sprints. He is also the author of four books: Magical Meetings, Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything, and Start Within, He has been published in Forbes, Fast Company, Innovation Leader, and is a regular contributor to The Future Shapers. He publishes a weekly podcast called Facilitation Lab.
When not facilitating or coaching facilitators, you might find Douglas patching up his Modular Synth, boxing, doing pilates, and taking photographs. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Douglas is a thought leader and master facilitator of Design Sprints, Innovation Acceleration, Team Alignment, Meeting Systems, Culture Transitions, and Change Transformations. He is also the author of four books: Magical Meetings, Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything, and Start Within, He has been published in Forbes, Fast Company, Innovation Leader, and is a regular contributor to The Future Shapers. He publishes a weekly podcast called Control the Room.
When not facilitating or coaching facilitators you might find Douglas patching up his Modular Synth, boxing, doing pilates, and taking photographs. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Alison Coward
Alison Coward is the founder of Bracket, a consultancy that partners with ambitious, forward-thinking companies to help them build high-performing and collaborative team cultures. She is a culture strategist, workshop facilitator, coach, trainer, keynote speaker and author of “A Pocket Guide to Effective Workshops” and “Workshop Culture: a guide to building teams that thrive”. Clients include: Google, Meta, World Federation of Advertisers, Wellcome and the V&A. With 20 years’ experience working in, leading and facilitating creative teams, Alison is passionate about finding the balance between creativity, productivity and collaboration so that teams can thrive and do their best work together.
In Partnership With
Work214
Work214 is professional modern coworking space that offers awesome private office space, coworking workspaces and warm & welcoming hospitality.
What People are Saying
"In a world where we tend to connect digitally, it's so important to still come together, especially in a shared community where we're learning from each other and we're also affirming each other. So, coming here is worth the travel. It's worth being in the presence of others. You can't replicate that in a digital forum."
Susan Wilson-Golab
Bloomfield Hills Schools
"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
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 our events manager if you have any concerns or if you wish to be exempted from this activity.
