A great pre-conference workshop does more than add another session to your agenda. It helps people arrive at your conference already connected, engaged, and ready to contribute.
We design and facilitate customized pre-conference workshops (pre-cons) for conferences, association meetings, summits, and leadership events. Led by Dr. Darin Eich, founder of InnovationTraining.org, these interactive sessions give your most engaged attendees a hands-on experience before your main programming begins, and they set the tone for everything that follows.
What a Pre-Conference Workshop Can Accomplish
Conference organizers add a pre-con for a few consistent reasons:
Deeper learning for your most committed attendees. Every conference has a segment of attendees who want more than sessions. A workshop lets them practice skills, not just hear about them.
An additional registration option and revenue stream. Pre-cons are typically priced as an add-on. A well-designed workshop can sell out and raise the perceived value of your entire event.
Momentum going into day one. Attendees who co-created ideas together the day before show up to the opening keynote already energized and connected.
Community your attendees will remember. Conferences increasingly compete on connection, not just content. People bond by doing things together, and a workshop is the most reliable way to make that happen early.
What Participants Experience
A pre-conference workshop with us feels different from a presentation. Participants move between individual reflection, small group conversations, playful activities, real challenges, idea generation, and rapid prototyping. Within the first hour, people are working together rather than sitting in rows.
Here is how Jennifer, a participant at the CultureCon pre-conference workshop, described it:
“The room was ELECTRIC at yesterday’s Pre-Con, which kicked off CultureCon! We experienced design thinking in action, through play, improvisation, and a strong bias toward action. Participants co-created solutions, prototyped ideas, and walked away with actionable options.”
Participants leave with ideas they can act on immediately, connections with peers they will see throughout your conference, and methods they can bring back to their own organizations.
Workshop Topics
Every pre-con is customized to your conference theme and audience. Popular topic areas include:
- Innovating organizational culture with design thinking methods
- Design thinking and innovation for teams and leaders
- AI adoption and human-centered change, keeping people at the center of the technology conversation
- Facilitation and workshop design skills your attendees can use in their own work
- Storytelling for leaders and organizations
- Future-ready leadership and change
- Turning conference learning into action so your event’s ideas actually get implemented
On the AI topic, here is how Daniel described the pre-conference workshop at the CultureCon AI Summit:
“Darin’s preconference Innovation Workshop at the AI Summit was centered on design thinking and bringing the human element into the AI conversation. It was about curiosity, co-creation, and using AI in ways that honor the people at the center of our organizations.”
Explore our full design thinking workshops and innovation workshops for more on the methods behind these sessions, or see our approach to facilitation workshops.
Formats and Customization
Pre-conference workshops typically run as half-day or full-day sessions, in person, for groups from 20 to 150+ participants. Larger formats, hackathon-style sessions, and virtual or hybrid versions are also available.
Every engagement starts with a discovery conversation about your conference theme, your attendees, and what you want the workshop to accomplish. We then design the session around your event: the challenges participants work on, the stories they share, and the outcomes they leave with all connect to your conference, so the pre-con acts as an on-ramp to your main programming rather than a disconnected add-on.
What Conference Organizers Gain
Beyond the participant experience, organizers tell us a pre-con delivers:
- A differentiated agenda item that helps registration marketing
- Early arrivals, which supports your venue, exhibitors, and opening-night events
- Attendee testimonials and social posts that promote the conference itself
- A repeatable annual tradition your community looks forward to
Case Study: The CultureCon Pre-Conference Workshop
We have opened CultureCon, a leading organizational culture conference, with a design thinking pre-conference workshop every year since the inaugural 2018 conference, including the CultureCon AI Summit. Participants co-create solutions to real culture challenges from their own workplaces, close with a group reflection that captures their collective wisdom, and carry both the connections and the ideas into the conference.
Read the full story, including the culture innovation ideas participants generated and their closing reflections in their own words: CultureCon Pre-Conference Workshop Case Study.
What Participants Say
“Yesterday’s pre-conference workshop was a great way to kick things off! So many good ideas to put into action right NOW.” — Jennifer
“Huge experience for me and I loved it! Met some pretty awesome new friends in this workshop AND learned so much for us to take back to our office.” — Jessica
“Dr. Eich is a wonderfully engaging and in-the-moment speaker who captures the imagination of the audience in a personally rewarding manner!” — Rod
About Dr. Darin Eich
Darin Eich, Ph.D., is the founder of InnovationTraining.org and has spent more than twenty years designing and facilitating innovation, design thinking, and leadership development experiences for organizations ranging from universities to Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has facilitated conference workshops, keynotes, and pre-conference experiences for associations and events across the country.
Bring a Pre-Conference Workshop to Your Event
If you are programming a conference, summit, or association event and exploring a pre-conference workshop, we would love to talk through your event, your attendees, and what a session could look like. Contact us to start the conversation.