A Big Idea: The Beginning of the Keep-it-Simple One-Hour Workshop

How many times have you gone to a workshop and staggered away, weighed down by information overload? However, by the time we become presenters, many of us forget this experience and try to cram everything we know into an hour.

Packaging is the perfect analogy here. Think about your last vacation. Did you really use everything you packed, or did you pack for every possible contingency, only to return home with most of the items unused? There is a lesson on simplicity there.

Don’t confuse your audience. Find a great idea or general concept for your one hour workshop. Every concept you cover ties back to that big topic, and as the hour progresses, you’ll want to make sure you make connections with your audience.

The big idea is something you want your audience to walk away with, that will increase their awareness, enrich their lives, and leave them wanting more. Some examples of great ideas include:

Every financially successful person follows three rules: spend less than you earn; pay yourself first; make your money work for you.

If you have a newsletter or a blog, you have everything you need to write your first e-book.

Planning for the rest of your life begins with creating your personal vision.

Each of these ideas sets up the rest of the program. In curriculum design, we call the process of choosing that big idea that defines the purpose of the program. This purpose statement is then used to generate objectives or statements of what the participant will learn. For your one hour workshop, the objectives are your concepts.

You can make the design process easier by using two of the basic design goal questions to help you think through your concepts and how you will present them:

Who is the actor? This means, who is your audience? Who needs to be able to do or understand something by the end of the hour?

What is the behavior to treat? What do you want someone to be able to do differently or think differently at the end of this hour?

Find the simplest answer, stick with it, and leave your audience clamoring for more!