TJ Editor Jo Cook takes us inside SOFest — the joyful, curious, and beautifully unorthodox learning festival in a field. With sessions ranging from AI coaching to human design, wild swimming to silent discos, this is professional development done differently — and maybe just how it should be, learning in the wild!

This video captures the spirit of SOFest (School of Facilitation Festival) — a learning event like no other, complete with glamping and a festival atmosphere. Featuring interviews, reflections and lush footage, it explores how community, curiosity and open space transformed professional development into something deeply personal, playful and profound.

• Brave space, not just safe space: SOFest gave facilitators permission to show up fully, as learners, not just experts
  
  
• AI, empathy and experimentation: From coaching to client conversations, future skills were explored through real-world conversations
  
  
• Nature fuels connection: Learning under open skies shifted the energy and the outcomes in unexpected, unforgettable ways

What do people think who were there?

“Really captures that fabulous event!”

“Brilliant job capturing the magic”

“Brilliant summary and reflection”

Read more about SOFest from it’s founder, Kirsty Lewis, on her TJ blog.

Thank you to TechSmith for providing Camtasia and Audiate for the editing.

Transcript from TechSmith Audiate:

SoFest is this amazing idea…that has become reality, become manifest. Um, it’s a party in a field where the theme is learning and curiosity and growth. And so we’ve brought together facilitators from all over the UK, all over the world, and we are talking…
in little fits and starts about the work we do and how we wanna be better at the work we do. Because, you know, how can we help other people learn if we’re not learning ourselves? But because we are, um, um, yeah, self professed experts in the world of learning, we wanna do it in the best possible way. And that means being outdoors, having fun, surrounding yourself with the best people, uh, showing up, being present, uh, giving hugs, giving loves, giving support, and just being our best selves as we go on this amazing learning journey together…
First, so first, the inaugural petition. Um, yeah. Thank you for being here. I sort of I’ve been dreaming about this bit. I’m, like, standing here, and, like, whenever I go for a run, I’m, like, what’s it gonna be like?
And, uh, looking out at a sea of faces. And many of you, like, I know really well, are your friends. So, yeah, it’s rather cool. So thank you very very much for being here.
And what a beautiful setting to be having these conversations. And today, I’m going to still talk about something that is really, really close to my heart, which is about business operations. I spent most of my school career sitting in college because I was too difficult…
and too disruptive. We’ve had all kinds of sessions, presentations…um, people talking about neurodiversity, about business. We’ve had some human design sessions. We’ve had sessions where people have looked at making cards, a bit like games, uh, to help explain…concepts to get people involved in what they’re doing from a learning perspective. Uh, there have been some sessions that have been on business processes.
Others have been more about our personal development. Some some yoga, some guided meditation. Also, there was, like, creating little vision cards. Uh, we’re in a place where there’s a lake, which I don’t think you can see in the video. It’s behind the trees.
So you can do some wild swimming if you want to. There’s yoga tomorrow morning. There’s a silent disco where you wear headphones. What AI is role play allows you to do is give that personalized learning experience to every single learner that you’re working with. There was people just trying to get their heads around.
You could use AI as a coach to role play like oh my god. Um
and then there were some people that perhaps more experienced in terms of well how do we make that more nuanced or how do we make that work for our clients or um you know what does that actually mean in practice. So it’s always interesting when there’s a range of experience, uh, people who are just, like, dipping their toe in it, and some people who’ve had a a really good go at it. So that that’s that’s happened to themselves. So Yeah. And Melanie, you’ve got some experience of this already?
Yeah. Actually, I mean, I I just loved it by the way because it’s, uh, you know, we do a lot of work in transfer of really how to make learning stick. And actually, that’s where I see the biggest opportunity for AI. Because I mean, coaching is so expensive if you wanna make it scalable. Yeah.
So very often, it’s not available for everyone, but we all know especially on soft skills, unless people really get a chance to actively keep practicing Yeah. It’s not gonna stick. Yeah. And so I use it a lot for after the training. So I’ve never experimented in the training.
I still use actors for that. Yeah. So I’m married to an actor. That’s how I met Tim so I’m biased…
I don’t want it to lose a job, but I use it a lot for afterwards. Yeah. So I think that’s where we can really provide people with that opportunity to keep practicing in a very highly personalized way or how you say hyper personalized. Hyper personalized. Yeah.
So I think that’s great. This is awesome. And and and absolutely, it’s not about replacing trainers and facilitating. Supplementing it. It’s complementing it.
Yeah. Yeah. So I think that’s where a lot of our clients say, but how do I scale this? Like, I know they should keep practicing, but we don’t have to budget for it. Yeah.
And I think that’s where AI provides a great opportunity. Sure. Absolutely. Seeing our volunteers here at SoFest, SoFest has been amazing. It’s a great opportunity.
I’m a bit of an introvert, but great opportunity to have a soft launch into it. But it just the background things help these people out and making sure it lands well for everybody. And in the process of doing that, I also get a chance to meet everybody, whether it’s arriving, checking in to check if they’re having a good time. The client’s really only interested in one of two things. They’ve already got a problem that you can help them get rid of, or they’ve got result they haven’t got a result that you can help them to a customer.
That’s what they’re really used to do. So when you think about what you do for them, it’s useful to think about in terms of what’s the problem that you solve for people, what’s the result you’re enabling for them. How to position yourself in the sea of people who do very similar stuff. So, um
, about identifying your ideal client, your specialism and the messaging and positioning that you’re gonna do to get that message. Niching is not necessarily the way it’s more about specialisms which are more hats that you can change whereas niching feels very constraining and it was also about actually sitting there thinking who do I really want to work with? Who have I really enjoyed working with? And perhaps those are the people not necessarily people tell me who I should work. That was insightful.
Design your, uh, sessions with emotions in mind. And I’d always thought emotions and energy levels and interest, that’s something that I would do on the day when I facilitate. Keeping an eye and making sure. But it was really interesting to see how I can bring that into my design to to design content, to design activities, as long as there’s there’s a secret. I mean, it’s not a a secret. Think about who’s your ideal audience, who you want to connect with, and who you are as well, actually. How do you want to show up? That So yeah.
And I think it’s the the turn up. Turn up and be yourself because if you’re trying to reach your ideal client, they’ve got to know who you. They’ve got to know who you are. And if you follow an algorithm, they will know what the algorithm is telling them. But if they want to work with you, let them Yeah.
Let them see you. And then also you’ll end up sounding like like everybody else, which is just why would we want to do that? And I think people buy people, um, and they want to see you. We do it in business and also your own businesses and your clients’ businesses because we have to take people to a better place and in a better way. We have to grow, we have to transform, and we have to innovate.
One of the things I would say about kind of midlife, and I know it’s such a cliche term, if not now then when, And some of you that were in a session that I was in and I said, first time in my life at sixty one, I can actually say I feel comfortable in my own skin…
Being more intentional about asking for referrals, how many of you do that… I don’t. What stops you from doing it? I forget…
It’s icky. This is the go canvas. A very simple tool to have very structured conversations with clients to agree on why are we doing the training and what were you what problem are we trying to solve so that we can also evaluate afterwards whether we actually reach that destination. Connection, I think, is actually really, really important. And I would encourage you to keep experimenting.
Keep doing this because you’ll just gain so much more knowledge about your relationships with your work, with the organizations, with the people. But you can also use this elsewhere as well. The vibe here, everyone’s super chilled. Everyone’s…like, I’ve done lots of sporting events, and I’ve done weddings here and, um, all sorts of stuff. But this is really, really chilled out.
People are connecting, engaging with each other. It’s got, like, a real laid back feeling to it but also there’s a lot of structure to it which is really nice. For the first time ever I went, uh, wild swimming in the lake which is something I’ve always fancied and I’d had a good night last night so it was a nice fresh start to the morning which was amazing. And then even better than that after I finished my relatively quick dip while swimming, I managed to fit in a bit of silent disco and some singing my favorite songs and uh
, yeah. It was super fun. It’s exceeded my expectations actually. The venue is is really great and the whole setup makes us feel quite relaxed and you feel like a nice sleep spot, uh, which is no joking matter actually. Uh, it’s because I’ve been to lots of things which I I haven’t done before or thought about before.
I didn’t wanna feel foolish. I didn’t feel I would by being, you know, like in the first yoga session that I had ever done. Yeah. Who who would think of that? But the actual the technical sessions, leadership sessions, the really insightful one.
It’s just been a real roller coaster of an experience. The nervousness, the not knowing what to expect before getting here. Um, not quite sure who I was gonna be staying in the tent with…
What it was gonna be like being outside…surrounded by people especially when I’m so much on my own. I work on my own. I live on my own. And then…
I knew I was there was enough faith enough trust that this is a community that has…it’s a tribe. We have our we have each other’s backs…
And it’s really, um, blossomed into more than I could have expected actually. The weather has just, I think, been the icing on the cake for me. The whole attraction of Sofa is a combination of this sort of festival atmosphere in this beautiful location and the opportunity to be amongst…so many like minded people. We’re all in the same industry, we’re all in the same profession, and we all have the same heart, I think, as well. Everyone seems to have had a really good time, so the collective circle will be meaningful and joyful.
The wanted to create an experience that was outdoors, in nature, not confined by four walls. I’ve achieved what I had in the vision in terms of out in nature, lots of amazing people coming and doing giving themselves permission and time out of their business to to develop, to grow, to nurture themselves, and not be sort of in the day to day. I think that’s the stuff that almost you can’t put a price on. Almost. How do you quantify that?
Because that’s the magic. And I think it’s the stuff that…
we should talk more about are those insights and connections, and almost that deepened personal meaningful element beyond I learned this. So maybe that’s my job as editor of TJ to explore that. I think anything is possible if you’ve been if you like, you can make your dreams come true. Because, like, I’ve been thinking about doing this since, uh, twenty nineteen. So I do I do think anything’s possible if you put your mind to it.
It’s been a… meaningful experience…for me…