So far, so good, SOFest
I’m not really a festival type of person. I prefer hotels with excellent breakfast spreads over tents and buzzing mosquitoes. I don’t do well with mud. I’ve never had a desire to go wild swimming.
So why did Aaron and I sign up for the inaugural festival of facilitation, SOFest, created by SOF founder, Kirsty Lewis?
Curiosity maybe. A work-appropriate reason to take two days away from the family, possibly. Because I always want an excuse to play with our LEGO™ Serious Play™ kits… more than I’d like to admit.
As late as Tuesday morning when we packed up the car I was still wondering whether this was a good idea.
Arriving a little late and going immediately into a welcome circle in the drizzle didn’t do much to assuage those fears. Was this all going to be a bit too happy-clappy for me?
Well, TLDR, no, it was amazingly awesome, I am a total convert and I cannot wait to go back for SOFest 2: SOFest Returns (my title not Kirsty’s) in 2026.
Let me share with you some of the highlights:
The People
Running your own business, even with the brilliant Associates and Partners that we have here at 13 Times, can be a bit lonely. We’re a distributed company without a home office - we all work remotely and only see each other a few times a year.
That can be hard.
You don’t get that peer interaction an office provides. You don’t meet people who are further ahead in their careers or specialised in different areas from you that you can learn from. Personal development can become a bit stalled, you have to actually schedule and pursue it and really, who has time for that?
Hari Patience-Davies with Jill Ford, Carolina Cullington, Steve Hignell and Aaron Patience-Davies at SOFest.
But if you gather about 90 facilitators, coaches, trainers and generally lovely people in a single location, finding inspiration from your peers is a doddle.
No two people were exactly alike - so many different specialities. Mid-life coaching, cultural consulting, menopause support, engineering trainers, DEI experts, Gen Z specialists - I spoke to and learned from so many different people. Spending time with them was a joy and my professional network is expanded and enhanced by being able to add them all to it.
The sessions
A mixture of 20 minute speeches, 90 minute workshops and 60 minute guided activities.
I don’t think there was a dud session among them and given we had to choose between 3 or 4 workshops and activities each time, there were many sessions where I wished I could have cloned myself in order to attend more.
Some of my favourites includes:
Cat Hase’s workshop on building card decks - I loved this so much I wrote about it on LinkedIn. The follow on activity of crafting a pocket Vision Board was also so much fun and really made me think about what I want for the next decade or so.
Clare Walkeden's speech - the last of SOFest - “I can do hard things” gave me so many brilliant insights in my notes. I haven’t had time to process them all yet, but her comment “to build confidence you have to go where it isn’t” will live in my mind rent-free for a long time yet to come.
Erica Farmer’s advice on using AI to build agents for training was a way of using AI I simply hadn’t thought of before. I need to bring this into our Dealing with difficult conversations and Conversational journey modules!
Remi Baker’s workshop on midlife coaching was thought provoking in all the right ways. “What parts of you have been waiting their turn?” is a question that needs more thought than the hour I could give to it.
My session
I took our LSP kits and mini-figs to lead a session on what facilitators need to know about LEGO™ Serious Play™. Scheduled against 3 other workshops - each of which I immediately wanted to go to - I guided 9 curious people through the best and easiest ways to bring some bricks into your workshops.
A small but engaged group we will able to progress through a warm-up, individual build and shared build activities, managing to combine the experience of being a participant with the deeper conversation of how best this works as a facilitator.
Plus we were outside, which only resulted in one or two of us catching a touch of sunstroke! It got me too - ouch! Sorry about that! Next time, hats! And sun screen.
And I haven’t even mentioned:
Singing around the campfire with Craig Dutton on guitar!
Phil Walsh’s brilliant SOFest quiz
The glitz and sequins of Wednesday night’s dinner
The impromptu ice cream van
The beautiful venue
The sense of peace and tranquility
I cannot recommend it enough and will be saving my pennies for next year!
