Inspired by Austin Kleon’s 100 things post, here are 21 things that made our year here at Facilitator Cards:
#1 Hanging out on Gather.town. We hosted a few different events on Gather throughout the year and everytime it was one of the most connective and immersive experiences we had online.
#2 Seeing people get creative with their Facilitator Cards. Including these amazing visual doodles representing the cards from @neutralgoodwombat!
#3 Bringing physical places into digital spaces. The idea of drawing a map of a physical space, describing each room, and then letting people opt into breakout rooms with that map in mind. Example, “Room 1 is the quiet study hall, where there is no talking and only silent working. Room 2 is the teacher table where you can ask questions and continue conversations…”
#4 Hacking our video in Zoom and avoiding the dreaded screenshares. Through the use of OBS and Stream Deck we got to a place where we could bring our screenshare, whether it was slides, instructions, or our full monitor, directly into our Zoom window. It made us feel like magicians, delighted our participants, and made the whole experience way more enjoyable.
#5 Adding our favorite activities for Gather to the Virtual Facilitation Guide and featured our first community contribution with Robin Funsten!
#6 Planting trees! We planted 192 trees and supported 8 rewilding projects with our partner in all things carbon happy Mossy Earth. Every purchase of Facilitator Cards we offset the carbon created from the manufacturing and shipping 10x so that we know we’re giving back to this earth that gives us so much.
#7 Figuring out how to use Airtable, one of our favorite apps! We were able to make it possible for a teacher who goes into secure classrooms in prisons to use Facilitator Cards whether they can bring them into the classroom or not.
#8 Partnering with BreakFree Education to donate Facilitator Cards decks to low-resourced teachers who work with incarcerated youth through our Deal Me In scholarship program.
#9 Creating gift guides and getting to reflect and identify our favorite facilitator gear from the year. Check out our favorite Gear, Books, and Tech of 2021!
#10 Getting to talk about facilitation for 2.5 hours on Workshops.Work podcast!
#11 Playing Cozy Juicy Real with the Facilitator Cards community and getting to know the wonderful humans behind it, Jed and Sophia.
#12 Seeing a YouTube video we made about Stream Deck take off and getting to connect with facilitators who found us by watching that video!
#13 Facilitating a group of passionate union organizers on the power of facilitation and leaving with a deep appreciation for how facilitation can help us move important work forward.
#14 Putting in a second order from our manufacturer for Facilitator Cards V2. Slight improvements, a pocket size 3-step guide for how to use your Facilitator Cards.
#15 Hanging out with Card Carriers at our Card Shark sessions. It’s always so fun to get to see folks who might come in feeling overwhelmed by options leave feeling confident, creative, and excited about their cards!
#16 Running our first open-enrollment one-day intensive with 14 wonderful facilitators and getting into the nitty gritty of the art of facilitation and the power of Facilitator Cards. (We’re running another in January, join us here!)
#17 Getting to see the cards in other people’s hands in person for the first time! We worked with a whole school of teachers in person in August to help build plans for when challenging conversations pop up in their classroom.
#18 Writing pro-tips (23!) and sharing them on Instagram and getting to read people’s creative ideas and have these little moments of connection in the comments.
#19 Sending Facilitator Cards to over 20 countries (even when the state of global shipping left much to be desired)
#20 Our team! There are now more people than Meg making this thing tick. from our do-everything behind the scenes administrative crew to our Council of Awesome. If you want to help join in!
#21 Getting to connect with facilitators like you. Truly. Having new facilitation friends all around the world and getting to see those people make connections in our community is one of the deepest joys of building this community, running this business, and getting to be part of something new.
Excited to see what 2022 has in store!
Meg & the Facilitator Cards Team