Tiny workshops produce best friends in ninety minutes.

technique — attributed to Sarah Shewey

At Shewey's EXP event, the workshops were intentionally tiny: five to eight people, ninety minutes, deep dives on subjects participants do not usually discuss. The small format means people become best friends with the group in the room. Participants have enough time to share their struggles, ask questions, and get into the substance. The principle is that depth comes from small groups and time, not from large rooms and short sessions. The pattern parallels Buonocore-Guthrie and Khine's Jeffersonian dinners and Endean's Dunbar-number argument. Across formats, the working unit of deep connection is small and timed.

For event programmers and conference designers thinking about workshop structure. The technique is most useful as a corrective to default fifteen-to-thirty-person workshops that feel like compromises between intimacy and reach.

small-workshops, deep-dive, ninety-minutes, intimacy