This part of the site gives things away. If you run rooms for a living, it is built for you.

Two books sit behind it, and both were written the same way: from material that was actually used in front of people, with the failures recorded alongside the wins.

The Facilitator’s Book of Gimmicks

Exercises that have been run in real rooms. Each one is written up with the set-up, the timing, the equipment, the number of people it works for, and the debrief questions that make it mean something.

They are grouped by what they are for: team challenges, openers, energy after lunch, and the ones that surface a thing a group will not say out loud. Bucket with Strings and Agent Down are in the team challenges section. Every card names the room it was tested in.

It’s True, I Looked It Up

Facilitators repeat claims. The seven percent rule, the goldfish attention span, the learning pyramid. Some are true, some are true with caveats a trainer should mention, and a lot are confidently wrong.

Each entry states the claim, gives the verdict, names the source and says what a facilitator should do with it. Where the honest answer is complicated, it says that instead of picking a side.

What gets published here

• An exercise, written so you can run it tomorrow without buying anything
• A claim, checked, with the source and the verdict
• A field note from a live delivery, including what did not work in the room

Three a week. Free, in full, and written to be used rather than admired.

Why give it away

Because a facilitator who uses one of these exercises and watches it work knows more about whether I can run their room than any capability statement would tell them.

And because material improves by being used. If you run one of these and it goes differently in your room, I want to know.