I was at a StrikeUP Canada virtual event today.
It was really good. I was also trying to choose one workshop idea from approximately 47 perfectly good possibilities. This'll become relevant shortly.
This was almost inconvenient, because I've had an unreasonable reaction to Skype and Zoom since the beginning of time. Something about those little boxes makes my nervous system behave as if it's been assigned a group project with no instructions and three people named Dave.
Still, I showed up. I took part. I learned things.
And afterward I was spent.
Not pleasantly tired. Not thoughtfully reflective. Just done.
Unfortunately, the rest of my life had failed to clear its calendar in honour of this development. I still had content to create, a website to finish buttoning up, and a virtual workshop to design.
The workshop won't be on Zoom.
It'll be in Rippily , which, for the way I want people to gather feels approximately one million times better. Yes, I’m biased. I also have reasons. That's another article for a day when my brain isn’t lying face-down on the carpet.
Here's the current problem: the content for the workshop is done.
I know what I want to teach. I feel good about it. The problem is the implementation.
Rippily gives me rooms, objects, movement, gathering spaces, activities and enough possibility to send an idea-generating brain directly into orbit. I'm limited only by my imagination and my knowledge, which sounds delightful until you remember that my imagination has no adult supervision.
We have the house. Now what do we do in it?
Claudio, who built Rippily and is very active in its community, has been talking with us about how people actually meet online.
Not which button starts the meeting. Not where the mute control is. How we meet.
He showed me Liberating Structures, a collection of ways to help more people participate instead of allowing every gathering to become one person talking while everybody else slowly becomes wallpaper.
The way I understood Claudio’s point was this: we have the house now. We need to decide how to use it.
Then he demonstrated a new pass-around feature with a cookie.
English isn’t his first language, so “tossing cookies” did not arrive with the same unfortunate digestive association it has for me. I briefly became twelve years old. Then I recovered enough to see the point.
One person gets the object. They respond, then pass it to someone else. It's familiar because groups have used versions of it in physical rooms forever.
I nearly wrote “in real life,” but somebody recently pointed out that our online connections are real life too.
Fair.
The exciting part is that so many forms of gathering, team-building and shared activity can now happen in a virtual room.
The dangerous part, for me, is also that so many forms of gathering, team-building and shared activity can now happen in a virtual room.
Possibility isn't a plan
When the platform can do almost anything, I immediately start trying to make the first workshop do almost everything.
Maybe people should move between rooms.
Maybe we should toss an ax.
Maybe there should be a collaborative wall.
Maybe a tiny experiment. Maybe pairs. Maybe groups. Maybe a mysterious object in the corner. Maybe a whole sequence based on one of the Liberating Structures. Maybe six of them. Maybe I should reinvent online gathering before lunch.
This isn't a shortage-of-ideas problem.
It's a container problem.
And that distinction matters, because most advice for getting unstuck tells us to generate options. Brainstorm. Explore. Make a mind map. Ask what else is possible.
Please don’t ask my ADHD brain what else is possible. We'll be here until Thursday.
What I need is a way to choose one idea without making the other ideas feel dead.
So this is the approach I'm going to use.
How I’m Going to Choose One Workshop Idea
1. One outcome
What's the one thing I want a participant to leave with?
Not seven insights. Not a vague sense that we had a nice time. One thing they can point to, use or try.
For this workshop, that might be one decision they have turned into a small rule, checklist, template or default - something that removes a little friction from their business after the workshop is over.
If an activity doesn't help create that outcome, it doesn't belong in the first version.
That doesn't mean it is a bad idea.
It means it's furniture for a different room.
2. One interaction
Which one Rippily interaction helps people reach that outcome?
Maybe it's the pass-around object. Maybe it's moving to a table that represents their choice. Maybe it's working quietly beside somebody before sharing anything aloud.
I get one main interaction for the first test.
It needs to do a job. It can't be there only because I'm delighted that the tool exists.
This is painful and rude, but probably necessary.
3. One test
The workshop doesn't need to prove that I've imagined the perfect virtual gathering.
It needs to answer a smaller question:
Does this interaction help these people get to the outcome?
That can be tested with a handful of people.
Afterward I can ask:
- Did people know what to do?
- Could they participate without being put on the spot?
- Did the activity help them make the thing they came to make?
- Where did their energy lift or disappear?
- What can I remove before I add anything?
That last question's doing important work.
Parking isn't murder
I also need somewhere safe for the other ideas to go.
Not a sprawling idea database with seventeen properties and a maintenance schedule. I know myself. That'd become a second workshop I have to design.
Just one note with three headings:
- Later in this workshop - useful after the basic version works
- A different gathering - good idea, wrong purpose
- Delightful but unnecessary - allowed to exist without becoming a task
Nothing has been deleted. Nothing has been betrayed. I'm simply refusing to make every good idea prove itself at the same event.
And what about the part where I'm already spent?
This is the bit productivity advice often skips.
I attended the event. I participated. My brain used the energy. The fact that I came away with ideas doesn't mean I'm required to implement all of them before the day is over.
Recovery isn't evidence that the event failed or that I'm lazy.
So the low-energy version of this plan is very small:
1. Write down the one outcome.
2. Circle one interaction worth testing.
3. Put the rest under one of the three parking-lot headings.
4. Stop.
No building the room tonight. No choosing fonts. No adding a second clever activity because the first one looks lonely.
The next step isn't to finish the entire workshop. It's to choose one workshop idea and test it.
The next step is to make the first test small enough that I can actually run it.
We have the house.
I don't have to furnish every room before I invite anyone through the door.
What idea are you afraid to park because parking it feels like killing it?
When the next one is ready, it will appear with my free virtual workshops for neurodivergent business owners
Until next time Friends...