Event Type
Facilitation Lab Summit 2024
6th Annual Facilitator Summit
The speakers go here
Join us this February for a unique and transformative experience at our Annual Facilitation Summit. This year, we’re taking a fresh approach, setting this event apart from previous years. Here are a few things to know about how this year will be different:
Intimate & Exclusive: We’re focusing on depth over breadth. With eight 90-minute workshops and only 80 seats available, this summit promises a close-knit, immersive experience.
Purely Educational: Our commitment is to your growth. The summit will be a purely learning-centric environment, devoid of any sponsors or sales pitches.
Practical Learning: Get ready to roll up your sleeves! We offer hands-on sessions where you’ll address real challenges for a real non profit, ensuring your learning is grounded in practice.
Community Focus: Community is a commitment we take seriously. Each year, we partner with a non-profit organization to select a pressing challenge that needs solving. Summit attendees will have the unique opportunity to apply their newly acquired skills to this real-world issue, fostering a sense of shared purpose and impact.
Our Signature Touch: Every workshop is not just facilitated but also coached and co-designed by Voltage Control, ensuring you receive the best of our expertise.
Reserve your spot and be part of this transformative experience. Facilitation Lab Summit 2024 isn’t just about learning, it’s about evolving. We look forward to seeing you there!
Spread the word
Summit Purpose
We are gathering to build and celebrate a community of practice for facilitators. It’s paramount that we create a safe place to learn, grow, and advance as practitioners and engage in dialogue that advances the practice of facilitation. We invite people who seek to lead better meetings and foster inclusivity. Our mission is to share the global perspective of facilitators from different methodologies, backgrounds, races, genders, sexual orientations, cultures, and ages. We are delighted for you to join us at Facilitation Lab Summit to bring a diverse perspective to our craft and welcome everyone, especially traditionally underrepresented groups.
This year’s theme is “Community” to commemorate our first year working together with a local non-profit organization and to celebrate the launch of our new community hub. We are proud to announce that this year’s focal non-profit organization is Austin Community College’s (ACC) Military Family Center. Across the conference, facilitators and attendees will focus on a design challenge from the ACC Military Family Center: “How might we raise national awareness and adoption of the ACC Digital Fluency micro-credentials and certificates for military spouses?”
Facilitators
Douglas Ferguson
President, Voltage Control
Erik Skogsberg
VP of Learning Experience, Voltage Control
Liya James
Cofounder, Center for Deep Self Design
Ozay Moore
All Of The Above Hip Hop Academy
Solomon Masala
Principal, Source Consulting Group
Lily Chong
Innovation Design Thinking Manager, Church & Dwight Co., Inc.
Dirk Van Onsem
VP Key Sports EMEA, Nike
Susan Wilson-Golab
Bloomfield Hills Schools
Erin Warner
EXEC Consulting, LLC
Durell Coleman
Founder & CEO, DC Design
Schedule
Day One — Diverge
9:10-10:40 am
Liya James | Relational Attunement™: From Breakdown to Breakthrough
In this session, Liya will share the Relational Attunement™ framework and lead exercises to help you integrate the tenets into your work to improve your skills in listening, understanding, and mutual responsiveness. We will experience how making small changes to the way we relate to each other can make a big difference in our ability to foster an environment of safety, creativity, and more open collaboration.
11:05-12:35 pm
Durell Coleman | Building Consensus Amongst Multiple Stakeholders: Current State/End State
Facilitating always includes an element of consensus building. Our job as facilitators is to help guide individuals with different perspectives and opinions toward a unified outcome. But how do you do that when the parties are on completely different pages? DC Design is a social impact consulting firm that has built consensus amongst hundreds of stakeholders at a time to reduce mass incarceration, homelessness, Black infant mortality, and more. This session is focused on teaching you a powerful tool you can use to build consensus amongst disparate, seemingly opposed stakeholders.
1:20-2:50 PM
Ozay Moore | What’s in the Soil?
Facilitated by renowned Hip Hop multi-disciplinarian and Non Profit executive director Ozay Moore, “What’s in the Soil'' will explore the power of incorporating historical and cultural perspectives when seeking community solutions. As facilitators, it is essential to recognize the influence of history and culture on the communities we serve. By embracing these elements, we can create more impactful and sustainable solutions that resonate with the people we aim to support.
3:15-4:45 pm
Dirk Van Onsem & Erik Skogsberg | Facilitating Change by Mapping Systems
Facilitation is a core leadership skill that is crucial to guide lasting change in organizations. Dirk and Erik will share a new framework based on systems change principles that will support you as a facilitator to guide change and help others build their change story for advocacy. They will deep dive into facilitating systems mapping as a key element within this change journey that will make the current state of influence visible and create a shared view that allows for co-creating change.
Day Two — Converge
9:10-10:40 am
Solomon Masala | Using Art and Conversation for Convergence
Within the art of decision making and group convergent thinking is the delicate balance of ensuring all perspectives are represented. This helps ensure group wisdom and collective knowledge has been engaged, and there is higher buy-in. Our session will warm up our capacity to hear and integrate others perspectives even if they are wildly different from ours, and tap our collaborative spirit to make a focused decision that honors the collective.
11-12:30pm
Lily Chong | A Design Thinking Deep Dive on Rapid Ideation
Discover how to harness the power of your team to generate a wide variety of innovative solutions to challenging problems. Through hands-on activities and practical exercises, you will learn valuable techniques to facilitate effective ideation sessions and unlock the creative potential within your group. Join us for a dynamic and interactive session that will equip you with the skills and mindset needed to drive impactful change through rapid ideation.
1:15-2:45 pm
Erin Warner | Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action
Embark on a transformative journey through the power of conversation. Dive deep into the art of dialogue, where it's not about clinging to the 'right' answers, but about collectively refining ideas and moving confidently towards our desires and objectives. Taking a leaf from the playbook of visionaries like Adrienne Maree Brown and the audacious spirit of FDR in the musical Annie, this session invites you to embrace not just bold ideas, but also the courage to act upon them. Discover the magic of compromise, consensus-building, and the beauty of learning from our missteps, while always aiming to minimize any harmful consequences of our actions. Let's champion the fearless pursuit of our missions, informed by our values, unashamed of errors, but always ready to learn and adjust course. Welcome to a world where daring dialogues drive innovation and change.
3:05-4:35 pm
Susan Wilson-Golab | Developing Narratives that Bring Voice to Targeted Audience
In this session participants will explore innovative strategies to delve into the lives of their targeted communities, capturing authentic experiences and reflections that often go unheard. This talk will guide attendees on how to weave these individual threads into a compelling narrative tapestry, fostering empathy, enhancing connection, and driving meaningful engagement. Join us to harness the power of storytelling as a bridge between your message and the heart of your audience.
Wait, What's Facilitation?
Whether you know it or not, you are probably using facilitation in your work. The act of facilitating is to make an operation or process easier. Facilitation skills are crucial to exercise when planning and running meetings to make them as participative and productive as possible. It’s imperative to company profit and culture to conduct successful meetings. Perfecting the art of facilitation is one of the most important and beneficial skill sets that make a successful leader.
A skilled facilitator can supercharge a team’s performance by functioning as a process guide for navigating complicated business challenges. Facilitators are experts at leading groups through key meetings and gatherings. Facilitators exist to enable better gatherings between teams, stakeholders, or collaborators of any kind.
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.
What People are Saying
It's an opportunity for facilitators to really deeply connect one-on-one in small groups. And get to practice, put into practice a lot of new methods that maybe are emerging and learn from one another in a in-person format.
I think that the interactions with the people who come to the summit are really important because we have a room full of experts, but we have an infinite combination of experience and to tap into that is absolutely amazing. I've learned so much and I'll remember what I've learned forever.
Yeah. If you're a facilitator, you probably are used to being in the background and giving out great space for others. Think of this as giving yourself permission to lean back, watch other people do it, learn, interact.
I have been sitting here for the last couple of days thinking, "I am so glad I trusted my gut to come to this." It's exceeding my expectations. And I really feel like I found my people. And so if you're looking for a tribe of people that you need to connect with, this is really the place.
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.
All sales for workshops are final. The registered participant may invite another person to substitute their place at any time at no charge.
Voltage Control is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Sexual language and imagery are not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks. Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference without a refund at the discretion of the conference organizers.
Any form of written, social media, or verbal communication that can be offensive or harassing to any attendee, speaker or staff is not allowed at Control the Room Summits. Please inform a Voltage Control volunteer or staff member if you feel a violation has taken place and the conference leadership team will address the situation.
Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion; sexual images in public spaces; deliberate intimidation; stalking; following; harassing photography or recording; sustained disruption of talks or other events; inappropriate physical contact; and unwelcome sexual attention. Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.
Partners are also subject to the anti-harassment policy. In particular, exhibitors should not use sexualized images, activities, or other material. Booth staff (including volunteers) should not use sexualized clothing/uniforms/costumes or otherwise create a sexualized environment.
If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference with no refund. If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of conference staff immediately. Conference staff can be identified by t-shirts or located at the registration desk.
Conference staff will be happy to help participants contact hotel/venue security or local law enforcement, provide escorts, or otherwise assist those experiencing harassment to feel safe for the duration of the conference. We value your attendance.
We expect participants to follow these rules at all conference venues and conference-related social events.
What to do when you witness a Code of Conduct violation?
All reports of incidents are confidential! We will not publish the name of the reporter in any way.
Speak up
Of course, we do not want you do get into a more uncomfortable position as you maybe already are. You do not need to interact with the person(s) who presumably violated the Code of Conduct.
Please let someone of the organizing team know
At all times, you will find someone at the registration desk or the conference host (the person introducing the speakers). All people who are working at a Control the Room Summit are very aware of the Code of Conduct. Approach them and let them know. In most cases they will bring you to one of the organizers, so we can write an incident report.
Important questions:
Who? Could you see the names of the people involved? Was it a speaker, attendee, service person, organizer, crew?
Where? In a session hall? In the foyer? At a partner booth? …
When? The approximate time of the behavior.
What?
- What were the circumstances that led to the incident?
- Verbal violation (“bad jokes”, discrediting, …)
- Visual violation (slide in the talk, T-Shirt with an inappropriate print…)
- Inappropriate physical interaction (violence of any kind)
Everyone working at a CTO Summit is informed on how to deal with an incident. If everyone involved is physically safe, we will only ask for security help or law enforcement at the victim’s request.
Report a Violation
Please reach out to Douglas Ferguson directly:
Email: douglas@voltagecontrol.com
Phone: 512.293.7279
The Purpose of the Code of Conduct
Our Code of Conduct does not exist because we expect to deal with any such problems.
