The Workshop Survival Guide

Whether workshops are your whole world or just a small part, this book will equip you with the tools to design and run a brilliant session, every time, with no stress or drama. And you won't even need to turn into a charismatic superstar to make it happen.

Folks tend to think a successful workshop is all about the facilitation (which does matter, and we'll cover that too), but the real magic is in the design you do ahead of time. It's a simple process that anyone can learn, and which will get you to the real goal: a happy, smiling audience who walks away with more than they arrived with.

• Why this book (and these authors) can help
• Part One: Workshop Design Essentials
• Maintain goodwill with regular "a-ha" moments
• Don't start with the slides (do start with the Skeleton)
• Vary the Teaching Formats to improve energy, attention, and learning
• The five essential Teaching Formats
• Design your exercises and refine your schedule
• Begin with the bare minimum number of slides
• Summary of Part 1
• Part Two: Facilitation Essentials
• How to introduce yourself without making everyone hate you
• Don't treat your audience as bigger than it is
• Seating and group formation
• Getting more from your exercises
• Answering student questions
• How to recover the crowd after an exercise
• Overcoming hostility, skepticism, and troublemakers
• Staying on schedule and dealing with delays
• Charisma can be manufactured with a clicker, a watch, and some small behaviors
• Protect your own energy by hiding during breaks
• Using co-teachers, expert guests, and helpers
• What to do when everything goes wrong
• Serve the people in the room, even if there aren't so many of them
• Summary of Part 2 (and a facilitation checklist)
• Conclusion and final thoughts
• Appendix: Advanced Teaching Formats
• Appendix: An example of inventing, testing, and perfecting a new exercise

 An OK book that gives generic advice about what to think about when doing a workshop. No details, and too generic to rate higher than OK, but there is nothing inherently wrong with it either.