Music
What Brian Eno knows about learning (that we've forgotten)
The ambient music pioneer's new theory about art as "adult play" reveals why case studies don't stick - and what does.
Workshop Design
Practical guides on workshop design, facilitation, and learning experience design. From session structure to engagement psychology - everything you need to run sessions that work.
I've spent over a decade designing workshops, training programs, and learning experiences for companies like EY, Publicis, WeTransfer and The New York Times. These posts cover everything I've learned about what actually makes people learn - from session design and facilitation to the psychology of engagement.
Whether you're running your first workshop or your five-hundredth, there's something here for you.
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The essential reads on workshop design
Best of...
I struggle horribly as a student. So I rebuilt the class. Here's how.
I had a horrible experience in a class recently. So I tried to figure out why - and what I could do to remedy it.
Best of...
Fitness and Education: from IRL to URL
8 lessons for the new era of learning
Give your social media timelines a cursory scroll and it probably won’
How-To Guides
How I do Morning Pages
The theme of my most recent newsletter was New Wine, Old Oak
[https://howardgray.substack.com/p/adventures-49-new-wine-old-oak];
encouraging readers
Resources
How to create an interactive workshop in Zoom
A step-by-step guide to setting up and running an interactive 90-minute workshop
in Zoom.
Note: This is part 1 of
Learning, Education & Growth
Why the future of learning is in the middle
Become a workshop creator and magical things can happen
The view was spectacular and the light poured in.
In a
How-To Guides
Step-by-step playbooks for better workshops
Creative Business
How to run a retrospective that actually works
Six months after a project you can barely remember what you learned. Here's a one-hour framework that fixes that - using conversation, transcription, and AI to capture the insights that usually vanish.
A.I.
Pascal's Wager for AI (and why you should bet on Scenario 2)
Dan Hockenmaier just cut through all the AI noise with a simple framework. Here's why his "scenario 2" bet makes perfect sense.
A.I.
The 80-hour reality check: What actually happens when you build with AI
Everyone's talking about AI magic, but what's the messy reality behind actually building something? Here's my 6-week journey through format fails, bad vibes coding, and the breakthrough moments that made it all worth it.
Creative Business
Two ways to define 'Good Enough'
Ever found yourself endlessly tweaking a project, chasing that elusive perfection? Yeah, me too. But here's a thought.
Future Of Work
Soft Skills are dead. Let’s talk Character Skills.
Forget buzzwords—how do we build environments that make developing Character skills exciting, impactful, and irresistible?
Learning Innovation
Why Learning Beats Education (and Why It Matters to You)
Education mandates; learning invites. Discover the key differences and why flipping education into learning unlocks serious growth and fun.
Resources
Tools and templates
Learning, Education & Growth
Worksheets and Worksheets
Dealing with the tension of using physical and digital assets in learning environments
Learning Innovation
Always do a run-through. No exceptions.
24 hours before our big workshop, we spotted a problem that could've killed the room. One case study had to go. Here's why the final check saved us from disaster.
Storytelling
Live at CMX Summit 2021
Here's the recording of the workshop I ran on storytelling at CMX Summit
[https://cmxhub.com/summit/] a
Learning Innovation
8 shifts in the future of learning & education
Over the past few weeks (ok, months) I’ve been working on a big article on how
fitness and learning
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All Posts
Everything on workshop and learning design
Learning Innovation
How to facilitate your first class, workshop or training session
My most recent collaboration project launched last week at New York Climate
Week.
Sustainable Foundations [http://www.sustainable-foundations.org/]is
Mindsets & Growth
3 circles for managing control, influence, concern, and anxiety
A concept I came across earlier this Summer is that of 3 circles.
I first used it in a business
Stage Left
5 lessons from Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola
The latest in Amazon Prime’s ‘All or Nothing’ sports documentary series goes
behind the scenes at the highly successful
Storytelling
Tall Stories - the importance of storytelling
Here’s a summarised narrated version of a talk I gave to an entertainment
company in NYC on the importance
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Jiu Jitsu, Influence, and Persuasion for creative businesses
This summer I’ve been working with Hyper Island as part of the program team
running the AMP NYC accelerator
Teaching
Why teachers are the new DJs
Three years ago I made a fairly unorthodox career transition; moving from
booking bands and DJs to building learning and
Teaching
The freezer or the morgue: a quick primer on innovation
As part of on-boarding for a new project I was asked to put together a quick 10
minute introductory talk
Mindsets & Growth
What gives you away when you least expect it?
As documented previously, I’ve been doing boxing training for the last 4 years or so.
My classification is (just
Learning, Education & Growth
5 lessons from a day with 300 next-generation creatives
Welcome to ERIC (via @ericfestival on Instagram)
Last Sunday I attended a careers fair.
The last time I did this
Stage Left
7 lessons from the story of CAA
A few months ago, James Andrew Miller released his new book telling the tale of
Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one
Reflections & Stories
My Local - London
This article first appeared in book 1 of The Manifesto
[http://www.themanifesto.co]; ‘Local’ is a series of home