Workshop Alchemy
The formula for workshops that work.
Subscribe to spydergrrl’s newsletter, Workshop Alchemy, a newsletter dedicated to the art and science of workshop design. If you’re passionate about creating sessions that inspire collaboration, engage participants, and deliver meaningful outcomes, this newsletter is for you.
Workshop Alchemy promises to be your go-to source for practical tips, proven strategies, and fresh ideas to create transformative sessions for remote, hybrid, or in-person teams.
My goal is to support your journey in architecting workshops that truly transform how teams connect and collaborate and help you architect workshops that actually work.
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Issues
- What Did We Create Together? Redesigning How Your Team Spends Its Time
Most organizations do not have a meeting problem. They have a collaboration problem disguised as meetings.We gather people, fill calendars, and call it teamwork, but often nothing meaningful is produced. Eight people in a one-hour meeting represent an entire day of collective productivity, and too often the output does not… Read more: What Did We Create Together? Redesigning How Your Team Spends Its Time - When Collaboration Is New: Letting Culture Set the Pace of Your WorkshopsI was brought in to redesign a national service for a program that had always been run regionally. Each regional team treated its territory like a separate organization. Their work, audiences, and priorities all felt local. When I started talking about a national approach, the response was consistent: we’re all… Read more: When Collaboration Is New: Letting Culture Set the Pace of Your Workshops
- The Part of Workshop Design AI Still Can’t DoLast week, I hosted a small cohort for The Workshop Workshop. Unsurprisingly, we talked a lot about whether AI and machine learning can help with workshop design. For the most part, it is still too early. Not because AI can’t string together an agenda, but because the kind of knowledge… Read more: The Part of Workshop Design AI Still Can’t Do
- Designing for sense‑makingHow to prevent the rush to solutions that undermines good decisions Last week I wrote about how AI is quietly replacing working sessions. Instead of pulling people together to understand a messy problem, someone “puts it into AI” and emails around the output as if the thinking is done. This… Read more: Designing for sense‑making
- How AI Is Quietly Replacing Working SessionsLately, I keep hearing the same line at work: “I put this into AI and it came up with this model / framework / analysis.” A few years ago, those same problems would have triggered a working session: get the right people together, map what we actually know, and design… Read more: How AI Is Quietly Replacing Working Sessions
- Less Explaining, More Doing
A workshop pattern to cut exposition without losing clarity When does your workshop make you talk too much? Think about your last workshop. How much of the time did you spend explaining what was about to happen, why it mattered, and how each step fit together? If you added it… Read more: Less Explaining, More Doing - Are your workshops too long?Why workshop length is a design decision “We need a half-day workshop.” Sound familiar? I’ve found workshop length is often treated as a given before the session even gets designed. Workshop length is a design choice But workshop length is not just a scheduling choice. It’s part of workshop design,… Read more: Are your workshops too long?
- Put the Naysayer in Charge of CritiqueThe moment you formalize the resistance, it starts improving the work. You’re not dealing with “difficult participants.” You’re dealing with a room that just lost momentum. You’ve seen it happen. Someone starts pushing back on everything. Not building, not adding, just contradicting. The energy shifts fast. You get eye rolls,… Read more: Put the Naysayer in Charge of Critique
- Why That Workshop Won’t LandNo shared problem, no shared progress. Your client wants a workshop to “fix” another team. You’re in the scoping call, 20 minutes in. They describe the tension: Team A gripes constantly about Team B. Team A wants a session where everyone hashes it out; they need Team B to understand… Read more: Why That Workshop Won’t Land
- Generative Play: Using creative moments to shape workHow workshops can turn play into progress A side-quest or a shortcut? You invite teams to build Lego models, create mood boards, or run design jams, and you see participation paired with scepticism. People lean into the activity, but they’re also asking, without saying it out loud: “This is cute,… Read more: Generative Play: Using creative moments to shape work
- How to Reset a Room Full of Preconceived IdeasWhen Assumptions Threaten Real Collaboration I was tasked with turning some 80s office space, mahogany boardroom and all, into a collaborative hub for our project team. Volunteers from across the teams showed up ready to redesign it, assigning spaces to groups based on their own fixed notions of who should… Read more: How to Reset a Room Full of Preconceived Ideas
- Set the One Goal That MattersFind the single goal hidden inside every overloaded brief. Clients love a busy workshop brief. By the time it lands in your inbox, it’s usually stacked with goals: “align on vision, brainstorm new ideas, prioritize the backlog, map the current process.” All in one session. With two hours. Over lunch.… Read more: Set the One Goal That Matters
- Workshop for OneHow to apply deliberate design to your individual work From Overload to Clear Findings Imagine you return from fieldwork with stacks of raw research, yet no clear path ahead. Your notes glare back from the desk. You gathered everything you need but you just can’t figure out the next step… Read more: Workshop for One
- Facilitating When Mental Health Isn’t Top NotchLeading workshops on off days: strategies for delivery when life piles on. You’re Off. Workshop’s On. You wake up drained, anxiety spiking not just from work stress but the world gone insane. A family crisis blowing up your phone, global affairs unraveling on every feed, life’s chaos piling on top… Read more: Facilitating When Mental Health Isn’t Top Notch