Organising your workshop with us

Different aspects of the organisation

Thank you for booking a workshop with us! In the following sections we want to highlight the different aspects of organising a workshop with us, organized on a timeline from “Before the Workshop”, “The day of the workshop” and “After the workshop”.

Before the Workshop

Workshop room conditions & material requirements

Our workshops are highly dinamic and interactive. The seating arragement in our workshops is not an auditorial setup, but rather a circle that invites exchange of experiences and ideas. We mainly use flipchart paper to present our didactic material, sometimes combined with very few powerpoint slides. Therefore, to ensure that the participants get the most out of our training, we kindly ask for the following room conditions to be met:

Room size: at least 30m2, large enough to fit all participant chairs arranged in a half-circle
The room should have windows that provide natural light
Use of the room’s walls: During the workshop, we will need to hang posters (flipchart paper) on the walls using masking tape
The room should not have fixed seating, such as an auditorium.

The following workshop material should be provided by the hosting institution:

Two flipchart stands with flipchart paper
Chairs for the participants with integrated fold-away tables (alternatively normal seats)
Chairs for the trainer(s)
One or two tables to organize the training material (tables for participants will not be necessary)
A stack of A4 paper and pens for the participants to take notes
A projector/screen to show some material

You can find a picture of an ideal workshop room here.

Recruiting participants for the workshop

We would like to share some strategies that can help the workshop organisers recruit participants at their institute:

Start recruitment early: Some profiles (e.g. in the medical field) have very tight schedules that are planned months in advance – the earlier the workshop is announced, the easier for them to incooporate in their agenda
Contact relevant senior profiles at the institute to recommend PhDs/Postdocs or encourage them to join the training. These could for example be people we (TPM Science) have worked with previously, writing papers or grant proposals.
Send regular reminder emails and put the workshop onto thewebsite/bulletin
Contact participants from past workshops and ask them to recommend the workshop to their peers. The recommendation from fellow students and colleagues is immensely powerful.
Talk to the researchers directly, e.g. go to student offices and actively ask if they received the email and whether they are interested in the training (and if now, why). Potentially, you could also contact the student organizations/committees at the institute, asking them to spread the word among their members.

Preparation Email

We will send a preparation email a couple of weeks before the workshop. This email includes logistical details, we ask you to send us the participant list with information about them, and lastly the email includes an email for the participants. We ask you to forward this email to the participants as soon as possible.

The day of the workshop

On the day of the workshop, our trainers will be there one hour before the start of the training to organise the training materials. We ask the organisers to ensure that the workshop room will be open, and already set-up according to the following conditions:

Arrange participant chairs in a half-circle
Place the trainer chairs and the two flipchart stands on the open side of the circle
Place one or two tables in the corner of the room (on the side of the trainer chairs)
If applicable, remove remaining chairs/tables from the room.

Please refer to this picture as an example for a good room setup: