#11 Unconferences, new communities and a lot of admin
Week notes: Monday 29th - Sunday 5th October 2025
Summary of the Week
Honestly, where did this week go??? Planning, community building, volunteer calls, and a TikTok account I did not see coming. One of those weeks that was full before it started.
Dot and Dash
Balancing the volunteering roles against paid client work has been a real challenge this week, and it's made me think about how much of my time goes into volunteer work versus the business. It is something that I want to keep my eye on, where my energy goes and flows towards.
Work this week has largely been planning. I've been knuckling down on revising the visual notes and training materials are in progress, including a mini guidebook to send out to participants post the upcoming sessions.
I also ran an unconference training session for those new to 'open space technology' method. Both myself and Rosemary went through our scope of work, session brief goals, and the session structure for the Sustain conference at the end of the month. Unconferences are such a great format where everyone who attends shape the format of the conference. There is no agenda; it's created on the day.
On top of that, there were Natural England planning meetings, both workshop planning sessions and a separate core facilitators' call. The event planning is building nicely; this is the second one that I have been part of which is building on their strategic planning.
I also popped into a new venue to scope it out for future workshops. They asked about visual workshops on the spot. It's always a good sign when they have looked you up and the work you do. I felt very flattered by their interest as it was so unexpected!
IAF and Community
IAF co-chair meeting this week. The conference planning is ticking along, and it is good to have regular check-ins to keep everything moving towards the conference date, which seems months away!
Also joined the Let's Rock It meet up which is our little cohort meet up with people I trained with with LSP which is always a good space for connection and conversation about how we are using it in our workshops
Lego®️ Serious Play ®️
Had an LSP and neurodiversity session this week focused on making LEGO Serious Play more accessible. This is work I care a lot about. The methodology is brilliant, but accessibility matters, and I want to keep learning more about that.
Mentoring and Learning
As a mentor for Sheffield Digital, I have a list of resources for mentees, drawing from what I found useful during my transition into User Centred Design. I'm currently working with someone looking to make the same move. I also joined a Freedom Builders progress pod call focused on marketing, as always, was engaging and grounded in real accountability.
One moment that stood out: I watched a live demo of Coachvox, an AI coaching tool. AI is growing at such a pace. It's curious to see how AI is being applied in the coaching space and what that means for how we think about support and guidance.
App Development
This week has been all about setting up the community properly on Skool. I've been in Skoolers (the space for community owners) going through the many tutorials. Outreach is necessary for my plan to achieve 100 subscribers. I'll start off with Facebook - which in parallel I have set up a community group in there to drive traffic to the main community group. Facebook groups work for a particular demographic.
Right now I am looking at the best sustainable way to content write across them all. I've been looking at the shift from SEO to AEO and created myself a short course on it with the aid of AI on Courseable.ai. SEO is search engine optimisation and AEO is Answer Engine Optimisation - which is what AI gen tools like ChatGPT use. More here is you wanted to read more https://www.semrush.com/blog/aeo-vs-seo/
I have set up the Skool community for neurodivergent entrepreneurs and am properly excited about this one. Link here
A lot of this week went into getting the foundations right. I have been inside Skoolers, the space for community owners, working through tutorials and building out a plan to reach 100 subscribers. Outreach starts on Facebook. I have set up a group there to drive traffic across to the major community, since Facebook works well for the demographic I am trying to reach.
In parallel, I have been thinking about content strategy across platforms. How do you show up consistently across all of them without burning out? That question led me down a rabbit hole into the shift from SEO to AEO answer engine optimisation. Where SEO is about ranking in traditional search results, AEO is about being the answer that AI tools like ChatGPT surface when someone asks a question. It is where things are heading, and it feels worth understanding properly. I put together a short course on it using Courseable.ai, which was a useful way to get up to speed quickly. It's my go-to app for wanting to learn things quickly in my learning style. It's all set up into project spaces. Link to the article about AEO vs SEO
Still figuring out the most sustainable way to show up across all the platforms. But the community is live. That feels like the main thing this week.
Past & Upcoming events
A note: some of these have already happened by the time this goes out.
I am hosting Visual Sketchnoting workshops coming up — one in Sheffield on 28th November and one in Bristol on 19th November. If you have ever wanted to try sketchnoting in a proper session, come along.
I’m hosting: Visual Sketchnoting 28th November and one date in Bristol on the 19th Nov.
Working with a fellow facilitator for this conference at the end of October https://sustainmidlands.uk/
If you are neurodivergent entrepreneur hop into the community I've just created https://www.skool.com/neurodivergent-entrepreneurs-8159/about
Updates on Pacts
PACT 1 Social media (7 days) Posting 7 days straight on Tik Tok - about the community for Neurodivergent entrepreneurs. Totally out of my comfort zone, but it's just learning a new platform. In progress time spent setting up Skool
PACT 2 Mind-Mapping Books (6/52) Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin. Especially as I am building a community! Not mind-mapped but re-listened to the audio book.
PACT 3 I will create a weekly sketchnote summary playing catch-up! It's now May 2026.. While I have been doing this in my diary .. It remains unpublished! (working on a bank holiday to change this!)
I wonder ...what the right balance looks like between the work that pays and the work that you volunteer for.. I've not found that balance yet.
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To join our neurodivergent community on Skool, click this link. Feel free to connect on LinkedIn.