Event modeling is practiced by teams ranging in size from a solo developer all the way up to large enterprise teams of 50 plus members. Many teams will benefit from starting their event modeling with an initial collaborative workshop, especially teams that include a variety of skill sets and stakeholders. This module will describe how to prepare and facilitate this collaborative workshop. Smaller teams or solo developers will follow all of the steps laid out in the next several modules of this course, but might not do so in the context of a collaborative meeting as we'll describe in this module. If preparing for a collaborative workshop doesn't apply to you or your team, feel free to skip to the next module in this course to begin the modeling process, itself. The event modeling workshop has the following goals. One, understand the business problem that the team is trying to solve. Two, gather requirements and specify how the system will work. And three, clarify how the system will fit into the broader organizational and systems integration context. Careful preparation by the workshop's facilitator can ensure that the workshop achieves these objectives and maximizes the value of the participant's time. The first question is whom to invite? In order to achieve the objectives of the workshop, the facilitator must ensure that diverse perspectives and sufficient institutional knowledge are represented among the participants. First, the workshop needs skill set diversity, so the facilitator should invite all the skill set sets involved in designing, implementing and operating this information system. Some examples of skill sets that should participate in the workshop are business subject matter experts, product managers, UI/UX designers, software developers and architects, data scientists and analysts and engineers and IT operations and security professionals. Next, the workshop requires diverse organizational perspectives. One perspective should understand the immediate business value provided by the system under design. Other perspectives should provide insight into how the system will fit into the strategic plans of the wider enterprise. Finally, the need for these diverse viewpoints and skill sets must be balanced by the total group size and participant availability. I facilitated workshops with as many as 50 participants. They're most productive when limited to no more than 25 people. Additionally, the workshop can take between 48 hours for medium size systems or up to several days for large systems or sets of related systems. So participants will need to be available for large blocks of time. Long sessions can be broken down into blocks of two to four hours over the course of several days in order to accommodate regular day job tasks. Now, I know you're probably following this course by yourself, and that's just fine. Throughout the rest of the course, try putting yourself into the shoes of the various participants we just outlined. For example, while adding events to the business narrative, you might pretend to be a business subject matter expert, or while designing the interfaces pretend to be a UI/UX specialist. The event modeling process draws on all of these skills and disciplines regardless of the size of your group. Now that we've taken care of the who, we need to prepare the where and how. When selecting a collaborative setting, keep in mind that the goals of the workshop are to understand the business problem and specify the solution, while keeping in mind the broader organizational context. The collaborative setting and tooling should help facilitate these goals. The first decision is whether to meet in-person or remotely, which will obviously depend on the team's co-location or tolerance for travel. In-person is usually the best for context sharing and group learning. However, event modeling inventor, Adam Dymitruk, designed the workshop to work remotely, as well as in person. When remote, the next decision, digital or physical collaboration space is easy, as it's only really feasible to facilitate a remote workshop in a digital collaboration space. However, when in-person, the facilitator will need to choose between a physical or a digital collaboration space. Each choice for in-person workshops has pros and cons. A physical space uses pens or markers on paper, sticky notes, and printer paper to represent the various entities. On the positive side, physical event modeling facilitates rapid iteration and context sharing among participants, and the physical placing and moving of the elements engages both mind and body. On the other hand, the resulting artifact is fragile being a wall covered with perhaps not so sticky notes. It's hard to capture and record or to move to the implementation team's area. A digital space is either a collaborative whiteboard, diagramming or drawing app, or else could be a purpose-built event modeling environment like Evident Design. These digital tools all produce durable model artifacts that endure through design and implementation which remain available to all team members and which are amenable to evolution as the team learns more after the workshop and during implementation. However, these tools sometimes have a steeper learning curve and this curve can sometimes add friction to the modeling process. For a physical in-person workshop, the facilitator must prepare the space and provide the proper materials. Sticky notes adhere best to paper, much less well to walls and whiteboards. Rolling out butcher paper and taping it to the walls can create a large modeling surface that doesn't constrain the participant's creativity. Even so, sticky notes lose their stickiness after a few attached-detached cycles, so ensure that plenty of pads of orange, green and blue sticky notes are available. In addition to sticky notes, printer paper is used for modeling or wire framing the interfaces. Each participant should have a marker and a pad of the proper sticky notes or printer paper in their hands so that they feel empowered to contribute, and so that material scarcity doesn't affect the modeling process. The facilitator should also consider the comfort and productivity of the participants by scheduling enough breaks and by organizing meals, snacks, and drinks for the attendees. For a remote workshop or for an in-person digital workshop, the first decision is which digital modeling surface to use. Collaborative digital whiteboards, such as Miro, Lucidspark or Figma work fine for event modeling. Alternatively, a purpose-built event modeling canvas like Evident Design, will provide additional benefits both during the workshop and during implementation and operations. Whichever tool you select must support collaboration by multiple simultaneous users. Ideally, the tool will constrain the modeling canvas to limit the degrees of freedom and guide the users toward creating a valid event model, for example, by providing templates with the proper element types and limiting where those elements may be placed on the modeling surface. Save time at the beginning of the workshop by having all participants sign up for and configure their license, accounts and so forth. These digital collaboration tools work well for fully remote workshops, as well as for in-person digital workshops where one participant projects the model onto a large screen while everyone works on it on their individual laptops. Finally, just as with physical in-person workshops, don't forget to provide for sufficient breaks to ensure attendees can maintain their focus, energy, and productivity throughout the workshop. Whether in a formal workshop setting as described in this module, or as a solo developer, you're now ready to begin the event modeling process itself. In our next module, we'll look at the first phase of event modeling, capturing the business narrative as a sequence of events. If you aren't already on Confluent Developer, head there now using the link in the video description to access other courses, hands-on exercises, and many other resources for continuing your learning journey.