Smashing Podcast Episode 14 With Rachel Andrew: How Can I Run Online Workshops? — Smashing Magazine

Bringing the Workshop Home

With in-person events on hold, workshop leaders and conference organizers are having to rethink how practical training gets delivered. In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, host Drew McLellan sits down with Rachel Andrew to explore what it actually takes to run a workshop online, and what changes when the classroom moves out of a conference room and into a video call.

The episode is dedicated to the memory of Christopher Schmitt, a longtime contributor to the Web Standards and Accessibility communities, who passed away recently. Along with his partner Ari, Schmitt was an early pioneer of online workshops and conferences, making him a fitting reference point for a conversation about remote teaching. The show notes point to a community site where those who knew him can share their memories publicly.

What Changes in an Online Format

Andrew and McLellan discuss how the shift to digital delivery is not simply a matter of pointing a camera at a presenter. The structure of the workshops, the pacing, and the way attendees interact with the material all need to be reconsidered. Where a physical workshop might rely on natural breaks, side conversations, and hands-on assistance, online sessions require more deliberate planning to keep attendees engaged and to ensure nobody gets left behind.

That planning extends to the tools in use. It is not only about selecting a video conferencing platform, but also about deciding how to share screens, manage Q&A, and provide support when participants run into problems during exercises. The workshop format itself needs tightening; what works in person can come across as unstructured or chaotic online without clear timekeeping and explicit instructions.

Engagement Without a Crowd

One of the biggest challenges for the online workshop is replicating the energy of a room. Andrew suggests that smaller, more focused groups can help offset the lack of physical presence, allowing instructors to offer more direct attention and creating opportunities for meaningful exchange among participants. At the same time, those running workshops have to be realistic about the limits of mediated interaction. Exercises need to be self-contained, and instructors have to be comfortable with the fact that some of the immediate feedback they might get from a live audience will not be there.

An effective online session, per the discussion, is one that treats the medium as a genuine constraint and designs for it explicitly — rather than merely transferring a slide deck from a stage and expecting the material to carry itself.

Workshops as a Product

As live events are canceled or postponed, workshops are increasingly being treated as standalone product offerings. The episode highlights the Smashing Conf Online Workshops as an example of this shift in action. Framing a workshop as its own deliverable changes logistical decisions — registration, ticket pricing, recording policies, and timezone considerations become part of the core planning. For attendees, the value proposition is a more accessible and often more flexible way to gain practical training from experts like Andrew.

Resources referenced in the show notes include SmashingConf’s online workshops page, as well as links to follow Rachel Andrew on Twitter or her website. The weekly update also rounds up the latest Smashing Magazine features covering structured data design, typography, particle animation with JavaScript, React Hooks best practices, and Django’s models and admin features.

Turning In-Person Workshops Into Online Events

When the pandemic wiped out the spring conference season, Rachel Andrew found herself doing something she hadn't done in years: looking at an empty calendar. All of her spring travel was booked—flights, hotels, conference appearances—and suddenly it all had to be canceled.

Andrew is editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, a web developer, writer, and public speaker. She's also a member of the CSS Working Group and is widely known for her teaching on modern CSS layout techniques. For the last six or seven years, she's spent about half of each year on the road, speaking at conferences and running workshops. Those workshops, she notes, are a key part of her income—and for many other speakers too.

When Smashing had to postpone its San Francisco event, the workshops attached to it were in jeopardy. Both Andrew and Smashing co-founder Vitaly Friedman had sold-out workshops. Rather than cancel, they decided to move them online—quickly. Within days, they had advertised online workshops and started figuring out what that actually meant.

Choosing the Right Platform

The team evaluated several platforms and settled on Zoom, primarily for accessibility. It was the most accessible option they found, and they didn't want to exclude attendees because of the tool they chose. Zoom also gave them the flexibility they needed, including breakout sessions for more collaborative workshops. After running two workshops—Andrew's and Friedman's—they reported no major technical problems.

Andrew and Friedman deliberately started with their own events because their teaching styles differ significantly. Friedman's workshops are collaborative, with group activities. Andrew teaches classroom style. Between them, they felt they could cover the bases and work out the kinks before handing things over to other instructors.

What an Online Workshop Feels Like

A lot of what attendees value from an in-person workshop isn't the teaching itself—you can get that from articles and video courses. The real value is getting questions answered and spending time with the instructor and other attendees. Andrew wanted to make sure that interactivity carried over to the online format.

During the workshops, attendees used Zoom's chat to introduce themselves and talk about where they were and what time it was, since participants came from all over the world. Both Andrew and Friedman also kept collaborative Google Docs open that anyone could edit. This is something they do at in-person Smashing events too, and it worked remarkably well online.

Someone would write a question that I hadn't got to, and someone else would have answered it, and people were clarifying things, and putting links to code pens in.

Andrew admits she expected the experience to feel impersonal. Instead, attendees reported that it felt intimate—like they were talking to her rather than having content presented at them.

Adapting Teaching Styles

For instructors like Andrew who teach classroom style, moving online was relatively straightforward. Her courses are essentially a structured tour through CSS layout, with attendees coding along with her all day. She found that style translates well to a remote format. Friedman's approach required more adaptation, with attendees breaking into groups for activities—which, Andrew notes, can be a genuinely nice experience for developers who usually work alone.

The workshops were split across multiple days rather than run as a full-day event. This was a deliberate choice for several reasons. It's hard for anyone to concentrate on a screen for a full day, and it's even harder now for people who are working from home while also handling childcare or home schooling. Shorter sessions also make it possible to pick time zones that work for more people. Andrew's first workshop ran in her evening, which was 9 AM on the US West Coast—accessible for people across the US and the UK. The next one was scheduled for UK morning, making it feasible for attendees in Asia and Australia.

Making It Feel Like a Smashing Event

Part of what makes an in-person Smashing event feel distinctive is the atmosphere—friendly, informal, and fun. That's harder to replicate remotely, but they're trying. Friedman played music online before his workshop, in the spirit of a live event. There are also Slack channels where attendees can keep talking after the workshop ends.

Andrew sees real advantages to the online format. Attendees can use their own comfortable setup: multiple monitors, a familiar keyboard, a proper chair. They're not crammed onto a tiny laptop in an unfamiliar room. The recordings and transcripts are also a valuable addition. Everyone who attends gets a copy of the recording, plus a transcript. Andrew hopes to add live captions to future workshops—something that would actually be a new capability, not a compromise versus in-person events.

Practical Advice for Presenters

Andrew has adapted her home office for online presentations. She uses a standing desk with her camera set up so she can move around while presenting, rather than feeling tied to a chair. She's also invested in proper lighting—something she considers essential for keeping the audience engaged. When coding, she wears a headset microphone rather than using a stand mic, so she isn't constantly moving away from it.

She also stresses the importance of having a support team online during the workshop. The presenter shouldn't have to deal with attendees who can't get into Zoom or are having audio problems. Having someone monitoring the chat and watching the output makes the presenter feel much more secure.

Moving Forward

Smashing's online workshops are running through at least June, with sessions lined up from instructors including Brad Frost on Design Systems, Joe Leech on Psychology for UX, Miriam Suzanne on Advanced CSS and Sass, and Marty Sutton on Front-End Accessibility, among others.

Andrew is clear that the online workshops aren't meant to be a second-rate substitute. People are interested and willing to pay for them, and they open up participation to people who can't travel, whether for budget, family, or other reasons. Her advice to other organizers thinking about moving events online is to be confident about it.

Rather than being apologetic and saying, Oh, we're really sorry we can't do an event, but we're going to do this. Say, No, hey, this is going to be a really great way for us all to get together and learn something.

Andrew is encouraged by how the experience has felt. She was surprised by how connected she felt to attendees and is glad the team decided to act quickly rather than dwell on lost events. As for her parting advice for anyone struggling during this unusual period: it's okay to not be productive all the time.