Event Type
Facilitation Lab Summit 2025
7th Annual Facilitator Summit
This year’s theme is “practice,” and we’ll be exploring ways to gain exposure and experience with new facilitation techniques, how to apply them to real-world scenarios, and the role they play in your practice.
Over two inspiring days, you’ll engage with expert facilitators, participate in interactive workshops, and connect with a community passionate about continuous improvement
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.
Whether you’re a seasoned facilitator or just beginning your journey, this summit offers valuable insights and practical tools to enhance your facilitation skills. Don’t miss this opportunity to practice, learn, and grow with us.
**Early Bird pricing ends on November 30th, 2024
Spread the word
Join us February 10th from 10-5 CT for the the Alumni Salon, a dedicated space for our certification program alums to reconnect, reflect, and renew. Dive deeper into the inner work of facilitation and collaborative leadership to nurture and sharpen your practice.
The first 10 alumni to sign up for the summit will get the Alumni Salon for FREE!
Facilitators
Alyssa Coughlin
Director, Chief of Staff, Autodesk
VC Certified
Caterina Rodriguez
National Director of Strategic Initiatives & Continuous Learning, ADL
VC Certified
Dom Michalec
Executive Director, Product Management, J.P. Morgan Chase
VC Certified
Elena Farden
Executive Director, Native Hawaiian Education Council
VC Certified
JJ Rogers
Product Design Director, Watermark
VC Certified
Dr. Karyn Edwards, PCC
Founder & President, Abloom Consulting
VC Certified
Kathy Ditmore
Manager Project Delivery, The Pew Charitable Trusts
VC Certified
Skye Idehen-Osunde
CEO, Inclusive Leadership Expert, and Dynamic Facilitator
VC Certified
Schedule
DAY ONE
9:10-10:40 am
Skye Idehen-Osunde
The Safety Net: Building Credibility and Psychological Safety in Workshops
In today’s fast-paced world, trust and safety in workshops are more important than ever. Join us for “The Safety Net: Building Credibility and Psychological Safety in Workshops”, a high-energy, hands-on session that will boost your facilitation skills and confidence. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or new to the game, you’ll walk away with practical tools to create workshops where everyone feels safe, valued, and heard. Don’t miss this chance to elevate your facilitation game and make a lasting impact!
11:05-12:35 pm
Alyssa Couglin
Change Through Stories: Capturing Hearts and Aligning Minds
Storytelling is essential to successful change management. This session explores how compelling narratives can align teams, build belonging, and secure commitment for new strategies. Learn how to craft stories that resonate with your audience by addressing their “what’s in it for me” and ensuring they see themselves in the change journey. Whether you’re communicating values, rebranding, or driving transformation, you’ll gain tools to create cohesive, captivating stories that inspire collective action and foster common ground. Join us to discover how storytelling can turn change into a collaborative and meaningful experience.
1:20-2:50 PM
Kathy Ditmore
Mapping Your Change Journey
Kathy will take you deeper into the complexities of project and team-level change. In this session, Kathy will guide you through the essential steps to navigate a successful change initiative at the ground level. From process redesign to aligning your team around a shared purpose, you’ll learn how to engage stakeholders and address the question, “what’s in it for me?” Kathy will also cover strategies for rescuing projects that have gone off course, helping you pinpoint root causes and realign with your goals. Through real-world examples and interactive exercises, including pre-mortem analysis, you’ll leave with a comprehensive map for your change journey,
3:15-4:45 pm
Dom Michalec
Facilitating Transformation: How Small Changes Change Everything
Born from groundbreaking research in human behavior and habit formation at Stanford, Dom Michalec leads a discussion in his use of Behavior Design to facilitate massive change in the smallest ways possible for people all over the world. With real-life stories weaved throughout, you’ll learn the models and methods he uses in both his work and personal life to help people flourish in the most important areas of their lives. You’ll walk away from this discussion with a new perspective on change and a budding new super power: the ability to create any habit you want. Come join Dom as he leads you through the game-changing world of Behavior Design.
DAY TWO
9:10-10:40 am
Dr. Karyn Edwards, PCC
The Secrets of Applying Executive Coaching to Facilitation
In today’s rapidly evolving workplace, the ability to facilitate meaningful group collaboration and foster self-led discovery is more important than ever. This session will introduce you to the principles of non-directional coaching, offering a deep understanding of how this approach can be seamlessly integrated into your facilitation practice. By enhancing your facilitation skills through non-directive techniques, you’ll learn to create environments where participants lead their own learning and development. Through practical exercises and personalized planning, you’ll leave equipped with a tailored strategy to apply these transformative methods in your professional practice.
11-12:30pm
JJ Rogers
Random Acts of Delight
Let’s explore ways to infuse delight and joy into everyday facilitated experiences, participants will be equipped with real strategies to create engaging and high trust experiences.
1:15-2:45 pm
Caterina Rodriguez
Enhancing Facilitation Through Nonverbal Communication
Understanding nonverbal communication is crucial for creating inclusive and engaging environments. In this interactive workshop, you will explore the powerful role of nonverbal cues in facilitation. You’ll uncover your own nonverbal communication styles, learn how cultural values influence these behaviors, and develop nonverbal listening skills to better connect with your participants. Whether you are new to facilitation or an experienced practitioner, this session will provide valuable insights and practical tools to enrich your practice and connect more deeply with your participants.
3:05-4:35 pm
Elena Farden
Consent as Ceremony: Learnings from Nurturing Safe Connections in Indigenous Play Parties
Dive deep into the intersection of culture, consent, and connection in this transformative session. We explore how Indigenous worldviews on consent and gratitude can shape and enhance polyamorous spaces, turning every interaction into a sacred ceremony. Whether facilitating group play or intimate connections, you’ll learn practices that honor each individual’s autonomy while fostering trust and safety. Join us to uncover how these timeless cultural teachings can be seamlessly woven into both polyamorous and non-group play facilitation, creating environments of respect, reverence, and deep connection.
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 the summit 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.
