Join Myriam Hadnes, the founder of NeverDoneBefore, for the grand opening of the last NDB Festival.

What do you do when you are having a bad day, are full of self-doubt and the facilitation is challenging — and you can’t just roll out your yoga mat in front of the group. In this session we’ll explore what you can shift in yourself to stay in charge and show up in the best way possible. Because the situation isn’t the problem, it’s your embodiment that trips you up!

Come ride the Rollercoaster carrying your full emotional baggage! This isn’t your typical coaching session on “bad” emotions. Instead, it’s all about a playful approach to building emotional awareness—exploring where you feel at home and where emotions throw you off track (especially when others bring them up!). Curious how our emotions shape our behaviour and group dynamics? Join us for a ride on the wild side of feelings and see where you get stuck—or break through.

In a world saturated with digital interactions, moving beyond mere clicks to create true connection is an art—and a science. "From Clicks to Connection" offers participants an insightful journey into how technology, when combined with refined facilitation techniques, can transform surface-level engagement into profound, lasting connections. Designed by an award-winning training and facilitation expert, this talk reveals how small shifts in digital facilitation can lead to immense changes in team dynamics, learning outcomes, and individual engagement. You'll uncover how to leverage digital tools in ways that don't replace human connection but enhance and deepen it. This session combines cutting-edge technology insights with proven facilitation methods to maximize the facilitation results. Attendees will experience firsthand how intentional digital facilitation can create environments where teams feel genuinely connected, empowered, and inspired to participate. Perfect for leaders, facilitators, trainers, and community builders, this talk equips you with actionable techniques to transform any digital gathering into an unforgettable experience that resonates beyond the screen. **Learning Points:** 1. **Transforming Passive Participation to Active Engagement:** Learn how to use digital tools to inspire participants to move from passive listeners to engaged, active contributors in any virtual or hybrid setting. 2. **Building Authentic Connection Online:** Discover facilitation techniques that foster trust and authenticity, creating spaces where participants feel genuinely seen, heard, and valued, even through a screen. 3. **Crafting Meaningful Experiences with Tech-Enhanced Facilitation:** Gain insights into blending technology with facilitation techniques to deliver memorable, impactful experiences that resonate on a deeper level and drive real results. This session promises not only valuable insights but also practical tools for cultivating deeper, more meaningful connections in a digital world. 2x Never Done Before presenter John Chen continues to innovate using cutting edge technology and advanced facilitation techniques to create breakthrough results. Author of the #1 Amazon book "Engaging Virtual Meetings", John earned the National Speakers Association's Certified Speaking Professional, 1 of only 400 in the world. Last time in Never Done Before, John inspired you and an entire class to do interpretive dance to a time lapse of a seed growing into a plant which led to breakthroughs such as having attendees turn on their cameras without even asking. Click to connect with John and see how he'll use 15 screens to create a facilitation breakthrough.

"Play is not a frivolous activity. It's a path to connection and creativity." - Adam Grant. In this session, we're redefining networking into net-playing by using lighthearted and creative activities to go deep with each other.

The full moon represents the height of a cycle—a moment of fullness before a shift toward something new. It lights the sky, even as it begins to wane, reminding us that transitions are a time of illumination, reflection, and transformation. Designed for facilitators who want to refine how they guide groups through moments of change, this session will help you create meaningful rituals to honor the wisdom of completion while preparing for the unknown ahead. Through collective reflection, you’ll explore how to recognize the fullness of a moment and how to design rituals that help participants navigate thresholds with intention. Join us on the eve of the full moon, as we create space to honor these threshold moments, much like our own as we enter our last festival asking "How can we honor cycles and can we use these moments to deepen collective belonging?”

Let’s predict the past from the future Let’s create an experience only after we lived it. Let’s go through the emergence long before it happens. Welcome to the reversal.

Ever wonder what separates a good workshop from a great one? It’s all in how you start! In this 90-minute session, we’ll dive into the essential ingredients for launching your workshop with energy, focus, and impact. From setting the tone to engaging your participants right from the get-go, this workshop will uncover the must-do’s that ensure every session you run is a success. What’s the secret sauce? The right energy from you as the facilitator, a killer opening that grabs attention, and those often-forgotten details that make all the difference. Don’t miss out on joining this conversation as we seek to decode together how to master the art of beginning workshops flawlessly—every time!

Some call it charm, other call it manipulation. I call it 'trance' and we all know it: when we're drawn in by a speaker, a play, a film... At the start of events people are often 'entranced' by music to make them excited and pumped up. But we can create any state - for example openness and curiosity - and we can do it together with our audience rather than forcing it on them. So come and play and let's co-create useful trances together!

After a quick dip into the world of group coaching - learning the basics of how to float through a group coaching session and adopt a coaching mindset, you’ll choose a challenge you’d like coaching on. We’ll experiment as we jump from one person to another, asking each other questions, and learning about ourselves as we go along. We’ll then spend some time in smaller groups and feel the power of being human, together. This workshop requires you to be open to sharing a challenge with the group and answering questions about it. It’s vulnerable, it’s edgy and it’s wonderful!

Human beings everywhere seek to be awake together. And alive together. Humans everywhere seek profoundness, yet often through simple things. For the many of us that facilitate and embrace such yearnings, we look to both do and be what are groups need and crave. “Made Fresh” is a Never Done Before special. To lift up connection in the moment. And to give you a few things you can take home and try with your groups in person an online. Made fresh connection. Made fresh joy. Made fresh engagement. Made fresh insight. Welcome. Let’s go. Tenneson Woolf is a 25+ years group process facilitator of mischief and meaning, through trusted forms like The Circle Way, The Art of Hosting, Flow Game and a bunch of made up stuff. Tenneson is also a poet, writing his way through essences of life, love, learning, leading. www.tennesonwoolf.com

“From a bad facilitator to a good facilitator” It’s hard not to compare when using adjectives. “Okay, I’m just a facilitator.” It’s hard to avoid societal expectations when using nouns. “I’m here, watching, guiding, learning, offering, befriending…” Verbs adapt to the needs of the moment. Being present doesn’t have the burden of consistency. It simply is what’s necessary in the moment. In this workshop we invite you to explore a question we're deeply curious about - What is it we’re really doing as facilitators? We’ll be playing with words (nouns, adjectives, and verbs), trying them on, seeing how they feel and what they reveal. Our hope is that our own unique stance will emerge and maybe, just maybe something even greater.

The treasures of your house tell the stories of your life. Join us for an active networking session around objects, stories and connections.

Do you wish you could dance freely, but feel too awkward? Join us for "Move Your Magic," a transformative workshop for “non-dancers” ready to experience freedom, confidence, and joy moving to music. No liquid courage required! In an extremely supportive environment, you'll connect with your body’s unique guidance system and become your own “kinesthetic artist.” With simple, playful experiments designed to help you find what feels good, you will tap into your internal rhythm, release some of that self-judgment, and enjoy the addictive freedom of unstructured dance. Key highlights: - Pleasure in Movement: Discover your prescription-free, always-available happy pill. - Building Confidence: Gain tools to feel comfortable on the dance floor. - Mind-Body Connection: Get to know yourself in a totally new way. - Personal Expression: Discover movement as an everyday creative practice. - No Choreography: Enjoy freestyle dance without having to learn any “moves.” This is playful motion for EVERY body - all physical abilities and skill levels welcome! Ages 8 and up. Everything will be optional and customizable to your particular needs. Wear comfy clothing.

Should facilitation be ‘sacred’ or ‘profane’? That’s the question Patrick and Mo would explore in this highly experimental and interactive workshop exploring the outer boundaries of what it means to retain the ‘sanctity’ of every workshop experience, while also having enough disruptive irreverence and ‘stretch’ into the ‘NeverDoneBefore’ outer spheres of the unknown… even the supposedly ‘impermissible’, ‘no-go’ outer limits of facilitation. What will we discover about the ‘non-negotiables’ with facilitation vs. what it means to be true disruptors? That’s what Patrick and Mo are excited to find out with you on this truly NeverDoneBefore experiment!

Worklife in modern corporate organisations can seem sad and daunting: Wave of change after wave of change after wave of change, followed by the next transformation, followed by the roll-out of another strategic initiative. Back in the day, change was thought of as a discreet phase. But it has become the norm; barely acknowledged anymore. Yet, in the face of the grind, it is hard for our minds and hearts to stay resilient, engaged, creative, and positive. We use facilitation (tools and mindset) create momentum within organisations. With momentum everything gets easier and feels better: Our sense of agency grows. So do buy-in, learning, fulfilment– and ideally even enjoyment! In this session, we will seek to create some momentum for you! We will also ‘lift the hood’ and share how we put together different facilitation approaches in order to create collective change for the better.

Exploring low friction ways to have a laugh and get to know each other. Between workshops, take time to connect with fellow participants from around the world in our Networking Sessions. These sessions are designed and hosted by special guests and featured speakers from the workshops work podcast. These sessions are a chance to connect with fellow participants, meet new people, and share your experiences from the festival. With thoughtful facilitation, you’ll dive deeper into conversations, exchange insights, and build meaningful relationships with like-minded professionals. It’s a great opportunity to expand your network and reflect on what you’ve learned throughout the festival.

When two or more people come together, an invisible group nervous system is formed, whether we are aware of it or not. This group nervous system is shaped moment by moment by the individual nervous systems of each participant. As facilitators, the ability to tune into this invisible landscape, along with the ability to notice our own responses to it, is a crucial skill. This "Jedi-level" skill enables us to address invisible disturbances and restore psychological safety and flow within the relational space. In this session, Liya James, co-founder of the Center for Deep Self Design, and Shannon Stott, founder of Improv On and Off Stage, will lead participants in exploring the neuroscience and evolutionary psychology behind this phenomenon. Attendees will also engage in improv games and experiential activities to experience how to attune, sense, and respond to shifts in both their own and the group's nervous system.

Do you have to do it all on your own? What if asking for help was a game? In this workshop, we’ll explore the art of balancing courage to go alone and the vulnerability to ask for help. Explore your personal strengths and shadows to navigate real-life facilitation challenges. Together, we’ll build a shared universe where you decide: go solo or call in support? What to expect: • Create a radar of your unique qualities—strengths, quirks, and everything in between. • Explore scenarios that test your collaborative skills. Do you want to go far, or do you want to go fast? • Join small groups for an epic quest, where the choice to lean on others could change everything. Game on. Ready to play?

Based on the work of Pavel Pavel Piskarev (www.neurographica.us), this intro workshop will give you practice in a sketching or doodling method that is mean to help you shift perceptions and experience around a particular issue, belief, emotion or bodily sensation. The session is not about making art, but about experiencing yourself in the present moment in a meditative, zen form of drawing. The session will be highly interactive, so please come prepared with the following items: ~ 2 or 3 pieces of thick drawing paper or cardstock ~ 2 black or dark blue permanent markers ~ two or three coins of different sizes ~ coloring pencils or markers in various colors ~ 2-3 round items that you can draw around to create circles

Step into a future like no other! In this highly interactive networking session, Jules will guide you through a playful and imaginative journey, using found objects to design relics of future collaboration. Expect creativity, connection, and a touch of the unexpected as you explore new ways to collaborate and network. This session will offer a fresh twist on facilitation, inspiring you to Think with Things and reimagine your role in the future of facilitation. Facilitator: Jules, Founder of THINGS LAB and Developer of the THINK with THINGS Method

How often do you sit through rounds of boring introductions and you mainly worry about what you’re going to say when it’s your turn? After this workshop, NO MORE boring introductions. Maybe you think you know what others find interesting to know about you. But the truth may surprise you! 🙂 Let’s create your unique introduction story NeverDoneBefore style.

No one sets out to sink their ideas, team, or organization, right? Yet, limiting beliefs, individualism, and power struggles often lead us toward exactly that. These forces can promote harmful behaviors, create tension, and reward the wrong things. While some of these patterns are easy to spot, many remain invisible and unconscious – until it's too late. In this engaging and thought-provoking workshop, you'll learn how to uncover those underestimated icebergs that threaten to sink your ship. We'll explore the limiting beliefs or undercurrents, identify the frustrations that take the wind out of your sails, and conflicting priorities that can overburden our engine. Guided by Gustavo Razzetti, CEO of Fearless Culture and author of "Remote, Not Distant," this workshop offers a journey full of surprises. You'll learn to use the "How Can We Sink Our Ship?" canvas to steer your teams safely back to port. Join us and navigate the complexities of team dynamics and culture, and discover how to chart a safer, more effective course for your organization.

1 breakout room. 1 Timebox. 1 challenge. Can you manage to mix your favorite exercise with that of another facilitator? What happens when “Troika Consulting” meets “Dixie Card Reflection”? Or the “mandarin check-in” meets the “fishbowl”? "Conversation Café" joins "Crazy 8"? What unique method results from this interaction? Makes sense or non-sense - we'll find out together! In the new edition of NDB Method Mixing, randomly drawn facilitator tandems will meet to create an unprecedented mix of methods - true to the festival motto! But this time there is an additional twist that makes the mixing even more challenging. So that this session will also be a method mixing like never done before. Only one thing remains the same: lots of fun. Join us and bring your favorite exercise!

Come and enjoy playing a board game together. No competition this time, it's all about getting to know one another better. No sitting around the kitchen table either, the board is online and so are we. Expect a Game of the Goose in which the focus is on exploring the geese (you!).

What is it like to finish something? To put the final dot at the end of a sentence, the closing words at the end of a workshop? What happens after those last words - when people leave the space where they've worked and explored togther, and suddenly it's time to leave? Let's explore together the worlds of endings, of grief, of parting ways... and unfinished business.

Join Lily and Steph in this Never Done Before exploration of the future beyond our mortal coil, and facilitating endings that close out experiences of life or learning with meaning.

We will celebrate the closing of the 2024 Festival with a never-before-done Party hosted by the one and only Jacques, the Party Scientist. You won't believe it's possible until you have experienced it, so don't miss out on this one!