Series: How to Run a Workshop People Remember (2/10)

In part 1 I argued you should design the workshop before the slides, and I teased a thing called a run sheet. Here's the confession that goes with it: for years I built every one of those from scratch. Run sheet in a doc, deck in Google Slides, props in whatever drawing tool was closest, instructions on loose paper, the debrief question list in my head.

Every one of those artifacts died a separate, un-versioned death after the session. The next time I ran a similar workshop, I started over.

Then I flipped the unit of preparation from "a bunch of files" to one folder per activity, and I built WorkshopSkill around that idea. This post walks through what a finished folder actually contains, because the anatomy matters more than any single piece — and because you can build your own version of this filing system with whatever tools you like.

The anatomy of an activity folder

Take a real one. Blind Portrait — a classic back-to-back drawing exercise, 2 people per pair, 15 minutes, offline, one person describes an image while the other draws it without seeing it. Simple activity. Here's everything that ships in the folder:

The Blind Portrait folder page on WorkshopSkill: group size, duration, setting, props, license and reference — everything about the activity on one card

  • A minute-by-minute run sheet. Not "introduce the activity" but exactly what you say to brief it, when pairs swap roles, when pens down. The run sheet is the artifact that survives contact with a real room: when the fire alarm kills ten minutes, you cut blocks, you don't improvise the debrief away.
  • A presenter-grade HTML deck. It opens in a browser and it's built for stage use: a presenter drawer with your notes, a run-of-show timer visible only to you, and a built-in QR engine — you can put a join code on screen in one step. I'll come back to that QR engine in part 4, because it's the bridge to live participation.
  • Print-and-cut props. The drawing prompts are poker-card spec — print, cut along the lines, done. No "find a suitable image online and hope it prints at the right size."
  • An A3 wall poster. The artifact the room builds on together, sized for the wall, not for a laptop.
  • A debrief script. The actual questions, in order, with the sequencing logic written down. Not "discuss what happened" — "which instructions were the describer missing? what did you guess instead?" Part 8 of this series covers why this file is the most important one in the folder.
  • A pre/post measure. A short scored instrument that runs before and after the session, so "it felt great" becomes a number that moved. Part 6 covers what to do with it.
  • The manual, in A4 and US Letter. Both sizes, with PDF bookmarks, because printers and continents vary.
  • A white-label guide, so if you're a consultant delivering under a client's brand, the materials don't shout someone else's name.

And the whole folder is downloadable as a zip, free, under CC BY — attribution and you're done. There are paid tiers if you need a single-event or organization license, but the free default is genuinely usable: no account, no paywall.

Why "a deck" is the wrong unit

Compare that to the default workflow — building in Google Slides (slides.google.com) or Canva (canva.com):

  • Slides have no clock. A deck doesn't know your room started eight minutes late. A run-of-show timer does.
  • Slides can't hold the run sheet, the props and the debrief script without becoming a 60-page monster where the presenter has to hunt for the cue cards mid-session.
  • Decks die alone. The deck is on one laptop, the props never got printed, the debrief questions lived in your head and left with you.

None of this is an attack on slide tools — I still use slides for content-heavy teaching blocks, and Canva makes a gorgeous one-pager. The point is the unit of preparation: if the folder is the unit, everything travels together, gets versioned together, and is ready to run again next quarter without archaeology.

Where to steal from, and what to file yourself

The blunt advice:

  1. Stop writing activities from scratch. A well-run Two Truths, Minefield or Silent Lineup has been refined in thousands of rooms before yours. WorkshopSkill exists precisely so you can pull a folder and go — the folder categories are organized by what the activity trains (communication, trust, conflict, leadership, icebreakers and more), and the how-to guide library covers the surrounding craft: designing a workshop, icebreaker games, large-group activities, psychological safety.
  2. File your own activities the same way. After every session you run, spend ten minutes upgrading your materials into the folder shape: run sheet, props spec, debrief script, measure. The discipline is the value; the site is just one implementation of it.
  3. License properly when you borrow. CC BY means "credit the author, run it anywhere." The licensing page spells out the free tier and the paid tiers for commercial contexts that need them.

The honest limits

Folders don't fix everything. A run sheet can't rescue a workshop aimed at no outcome — that's part 1's job. Props don't make an activity fit a room it wasn't designed for — check the folder details (group size, duration, setting) before you commit, not after the room fills up. And printing is still yours to do the day before; no archive prints your props for you.

What the folder unit buys you is the thing veteran facilitators all have and few can name: a shelf you can pull from at 9 p.m. the night before, and trust.

Next in the series: registration and check-in — the part of workshops everyone pretends is solved by pasting a long URL into an email.

Tools in this post:

Disclosure: I'm one of the makers of WorkshopSkill, QRCard AI, FormLM and ReportSkills — the tools from my own shop named across this series. Every claim about them matches what the products do today, and links go to the live pages. This series was drafted with AI assistance and reviewed before publishing.