Field Notes: The Night Before Everything

On flying to Lisbon, stepping into a full-day workshop, and the particular feeling of doing something you've been building towards

Photo by Claiton Conto on Unsplash

I’m writing this from the airport lounge — which is the closest thing to a liminal space I know. Not home, not there yet. Just in between, with decent wifi and a flight to catch.

Tomorrow I land in Lisbon.

On Tuesday, I'll walk into a room with over 30 marketing professionals and spend six hours with them — not on a stage, not behind a lectern, but in the room. Facilitating. Working. Thinking out loud together.

For years, my work has lived in the keynote format — 45 minutes, high energy, get in and get out. This trip is something I’ve been building toward deliberately: longer, deeper, more consultative. The kind of work where you don’t just leave people with ideas — you leave them with a plan. Something actionable.

I’ve done the preparation — the modules, the exercises, the facilitator notes. But I’ve also done this long enough to know that the best moments in a room rarely come from the agenda. They come from what the agenda makes possible.

That’s what I’ve been preparing for. And also what I can’t fully prepare for.

The session is called From AI Chaos to AI Capability. It's built around a framework I've spent time developing — and that is, the five dimensions of AI readiness: Skills, Mindset, Governance, Workflows, and Leadership.

The argument underneath all of it is one I've been making since before generative AI was a mainstream conversation: the tools aren't the bottleneck. Knowing what to do with them is.

I still believe that. I believe it more now than when I started saying it.

What I’m curious about — genuinely curious, not rhetorically — is what these workshop attendees will do with that idea when they sit with it for a full day. What it surfaces for them. What pushes back. What lands differently than I expect.

That’s the thing about workshops that talks can’t give you: the room talks back.

There’s the version of this I post on LinkedIn — the highlight, the milestone, the momentum. This isn’t that. This is what’s underneath it.

What I’m actually feeling right now is a mix of excitement and something adjacent to fear — not the kind that means stop, but the kind that means this matters. The kind that shows up when you’re about to do something real.

I’ve been working toward this kind of work — intensive, room-based, consultative — for a long time. Lisbon isn’t a milestone I’m checking off. It’s a test I’m genuinely curious to see the results of.

I’ll write more when I’m on the other side of it.

If you’re reading this as someone who has sat in a workshop that changed the way you thought about something — I hope Tuesday is that for someone in that room.

And if you’re reading this as someone who has ever felt the specific terror of walking into a room where you’re responsible for what happens next —

you already know there’s nothing to do but walk in.

Talk soon.

— Joya