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We keep hearing the same frustration from OD practitioners: you go to a conference, sit through talking heads promoting their personal frameworks or overly academic takes, and leave without any real tools. OD Out Loud, a conference in October 25-28, 2026 in Kansas City was built to close exactly that gap. Instead of lectures, it's structured as a series of hands-on labs — the kind you can actually take home and use.
Don't just take our word for it. One PNODN member and fellow OD practitioner — who'll be leading a lab at the full conference — sat in on an earlier sample lab still unsure whether this would really be different. Turns out, actually experiencing a lab (rather than hearing about it) was what made the difference: it's what showed them why this format is more practical and applicable for OD practitioners than a standard conference track. That's the same shift we want for you.
We're kicking things off with a free Taster/Dojo led by Verhanika Willhelm, founder of Willhelm Consulting and co-owner of Good Work Collective, a practitioner-owned OD cooperative.
This session is a great way to learn more about the upcoming additional conference precursor sessions, too! More info on those events during the taster with Verhanika. Learn more and register for the full conference here.
Your Facilitator:
Verhanika Willhelm
Owner and Principal Consultant
verhanika@willhelmconsulting.com | 206.355.7228
Get clarity, not just coping. Schedule a consult.
1:15pm - 1:30pm: Join meeting 1:30 - 3:00: Workshop
Consider joining PNODN today as a full, student, or senior member to get access to this and all of our great partner and PNODN-organized events! Link to become a member: PNODN - Join Us
Your team is under pressure. The old meeting formats won't cut it.
Budget cuts. Layoffs. Reorgs. AI making every decision messier. Your team is being asked to do more with less, make harder calls faster, and stay aligned while the ground keeps shifting.
This is exactly when most teams schedule even more ineffective meetings: one person talks, everyone else waits, side conversations burble, and nothing gets decided.
Liberating Structures fixes the meeting architecture. Instead of one person driving while everyone else rides, every voice contributes, ideas build on each other, and the group's collective intelligence comes out in the room. Full engagement. Full participation. Energetic. Stuff gets done.
It works for a team meeting, a stakeholder session, a planning offsite, or those difficult conversations you've been postponing.
Liberating Structures has 30 years of field-tested practice behind it, a robust practitioner community, and a fieldbook so new the ink is still drying. This is a toolkit you can count on.
Ready to change how your team works? Join us September 9–10 in Portland at the beautiful World Forestry Center for a two-day immersion where you’ll experience Liberating Structures firsthand and leave ready to use them the following week. What you’ll walk away with
You’ll spend two days inside the structures themselves, experiencing them as a participant, then learning to design and facilitate them for your own context.
Hands-on practice with a wide range of the 43! Liberating Structures
Skill to design “strings” — sequences of structures built for your specific challenges
Real problems worked on — not fabricated case studies
Liberating Structures supporting materials
Lunch both days, beverages throughout, and time with good people you’ll actually get to know
Free admission to the World Forestry Center Museum
No prior LS experience required. If you’ve encountered these methods before, you’ll go deeper into design and application.
If you lead, facilitate, or participate in groups and want those groups to work better, this workshop is for you. In practice, that means team leaders and managers, change managers, L&D and OD professionals, scrum masters, design thinkers, facilitators, and nonprofit leaders working in complex stakeholder environments.
Bringing a team of 3 or more? Contact us about group pricing.
Elise Keith liberally applies Liberating Structures to every session she designs as the founder of Lucid Teams, the New Rules for Work Labs, and the open Ways of Working initiative. A leading voice in modern collaboration, she helps teams reinvent their meetings, decision making, and ways of working. She’s the author of Where the Action Is: The Meetings that Make or Break Your Organization, and a fifth-generation Oregonian.
Stephanie Fleming is the founder of Viri Group, where she helps organizations close the gap between strategy and execution. With 30 years leading teams across Fortune 500 companies, startups, and nonprofits, she's learned that team dynamics is the biggest predictor of whether a strategy will succeed or fail, which is why she brings psychological safety and Liberating Structures into every engagement she designs. In a board retreat she facilitated, that combination enabled a leadership team to make decisions and align on priorities they'd been unable to resolve for years. An unabashed tree hugger, she jumped at the chance to co-host this intensive at the World Forestry Center.
Do I need prior experience with Liberating Structures?
No. We design for the room we have. If you’ve used Liberating Structures before, you’ll go deeper into design and practice. If it’s your first time, you’ll leave with a solid foundation and the confidence to use it.
What’s the refund policy?
If you can’t attend, you may transfer your registration to someone else. Just let us know. Refunds are available until August 15, minus any payment processing fees.
Can my organization send multiple people?
Yes! Shared experience accelerates adoption back at work. Contact us for group pricing for teams of 3 or more.
Are professional development credits available?
This intensive includes 14 hours of professional development. Participants holding Scrum Alliance, PMI, or other credentials that allow self-reporting may be eligible to log these hours toward their renewal requirements. We provide a certificate of attendance upon request. Check with your credentialing body for eligibility. --- The structures, illustrations, and icons used in this session are part of the Liberating Structures Fieldbook (2026). We believe in open-source social innovation. This material is adapted from the original work by Keith McCandless and Nancy White and is licensed for your further use and adaptation under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0."
Location
World Forestry Center
4033 SW Canyon Rd, Portland, OR 97221, USA
Paid parking on site via Parking Kitty. MAX accessible via Washington Park station (3 minute walk).
New Rescheduled date for this Lunch and Learn!
Less Stress, More Joy is a transformative and energizing workshop based on Amy Leneker’s book, Cheers to Monday: The Surprisingly Simple Method to Lead & Live with Less Stress & More Joy (Wiley, 2026). This workshop is typically a half-day or full day training, so we are thrilled that Amy is offering this special 1 hour lunch and learn session for PNODN!
Drawing on insights from her national research study, The State of Stress & Joy at Work, Amy reveals why the common advice about stress isn’t working and what leaders, teams, and organizations can do instead.
Participants leave with a practical framework they can use immediately to stop operating on autopilot, respond more intentionally to stress, and approach their work with greater clarity, energy, and joy.
What You'll Learn From This Session
Discover the five biggest drivers of joy at work. Explore why joy isn’t a “nice to have,” but a powerful catalyst for decision-making, creativity, and performance.
Join us for this enlivening presentation with Amy Leneker! Please note that this event will NOT be recorded. Catch it live!!
Overview
Neurodiversity describes the natural variation in human cognition. More and more, organizations are adopting and working with this concept, one that Marissa believes is deeply aligned with the work that Organizational Development practitioners do, with its implications for both social justice and organizational effectiveness.
Through this workshop, participants will explore how organizational design can better account for cognitive diversity through structure, mindset, process, leadership strategy, and culture.
Participants will find that these areas are ripe with opportunities to make organizations more just and more effective.
Session Objectives
Participants will:
Key Design Principles Explored: Structure, Power/Rewards, People/Culture, Process, Strategy
Marissa Mosunich is a seasoned operations professional with experience in manufacturing, consulting, and the nonprofit sector. With her company, Operate Well, Marissa helps individuals and teams find clarity, flow, and alignment in their work while supporting neurodivergent workers. She brings a unique blend of facilitation skills, operational design experience, and Organizational Development values, shaped by her lived experience as a neurodivergent employee, leader, and student. She holds a master’s degree in Organizational Development and Leadership from Fielding Graduate University and a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
10:45am - 11:00am: Join meeting 11:00am - 11:45pm: Presentation 11:45am - 12:45pm: Breakout Groups on Key Design Principles 12:45pm - 1:00pm: Synthesize Shared Findings
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Our mission is to connect, engage, and develop a thriving community of Organization Development (OD) Practitioners and business leadersRead More..
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