A Real Workshop

“Knowing about a tool is one thing. Having the guts to use it in a way that brings art to the world is another. Perhaps we need to spend less time learning new tools and more time using them.” – Seth’s Godin

Reading Seth’s post on insight vs. tools made me want to create a real workshop – a learning space that is also a creative space, a laboratory for actual application.

There is such a thing as good training, and we at the Interaction Institute do it very well – but a training is not always a workshop.  A training, even a good one, tends to be about the effective transfer of very useful tools.

We also do a lot of consulting work, we help clients through complex collaborative processes, and we design and facilitate them.  These spaces are about the application of our tools.  We are very serious about transferring capacity – about ensuring that our clients learn through the application process.  But these tend to be high-stake engagements, and my thought is that a workshop would be even more experimental.

The sort of workshop I’m talking about will be a learning and application space.  Participants will bring their real projects and will experiment with the application of good tools.  It will also be an intersectional space – it will bring together participants from different organizations, and even different fields! I can see us collaborating with our private sector partner, Interaction Associates, in the development of an “Interaction Lab.”

The workshop will not take place through three consecutive days, it will be more like 6 half-day sessions, so that participants really get to real world application.  I’ve just started cooking this up, so let me know what you think.