Choose the votes per person, and whether people vote on stickies, anything, or only the layers you selected.
RUN A
WORKSHOP!
Twelve people, three boards, one timer, a vote, and a deck by lunch. Here is a whole remote planning morning run in PopCraft, from the empty project to the readout on screen.
A brainstorm board in PopCorn. S picks the sticky tool; a click drops a sticky note, and “Launch in spring” is typed on it. A second sticky goes beside it.
DING!
THE JOB
Thursday, 9:30. The offsite starts at ten.
Meet Tidepool, an imaginary twelve-person app team spread over four time zones. Once a quarter they stop shipping for a morning, look back at what happened, argue about what matters, and leave with a plan. The facilitator is Ana. She has thirty minutes before people join.
The usual kit for this morning is a whiteboard app for the stickies, a browser tab with a timer, a poll in the chat, a doc for the notes and a slide tool for the readout. Five tools, five links, and someone retyping sticky notes into slides at 12:15 while everyone else goes to lunch.
Ana does it in one. PopCraft's board mode, PopCorn, is the same canvas, file format and multiplayer as the design side. So the stickies, the timer, the vote and the slides all live in files in one project, and the readout is made from the board rather than retyped from it.
15
board templates to start from
10
stamps, from Fire to +1
3
ways to present the deck
0
exports between board and slides
RUN OF SHOW
The morning, slot by slot
Each bar is as long as the slot. Under it: the board for that slot and the tools it leans on. The rest of this page walks through them in order.
30′
15′
20′
15′
30′
25′
15′
- 09:30Set the table · Icebreaker · Retrospective · Dot voting · Now / Next / LaterTemplatesTeam projectShare
- 10:00Warm up · IcebreakerStickiesEmotesSpotlight
- 10:15Look back · RetrospectiveTimerStickiesStamps
- 10:35Pick the fights · RetrospectiveVotingCopy results
- 10:50Plan the quarter · Now / Next / LaterTidy upConnectorsComments
- 11:20Make the deck · Report deckDesign modeCopy & pasteSpeaker notes
- 11:45Show it · Report deckPresenter viewShare link
150 minutes, one tool, nobody asking “which link was the board again?”
09:30
Set the table
- 1
One project for the day
Make a project called “Q4 offsite” in the team. Every board and the deck go in it, so the whole morning is one folder on Home. - 2
A board per round
New file, Board, then the template: Icebreaker, Retrospective, Now / Next / Later. They open in PopCorn, the board mode, ready to type on. - 3
Rename the prompts
The templates are ordinary layers. Change “Two truths and a lie” to something your team will actually answer. - 4
Share before you start
Share, then invite the team by email or set link access. Give the people who should only watch a view or comment role.
10:00
Warm up on the icebreaker
People arrive as named cursors. Ana clicks Spotlight on her avatar and everyone's view follows hers to the Icebreaker board: six prompts, each with room for answers.
S drops a sticky, typing fills it, Esc finishes. The quiet ones throw an emote over their cursor instead. Fifteen minutes in, the board is full and people have stopped saying “can you hear me”.
The Icebreaker board template in PopCorn: six prompts with room to answer. S picks the sticky tool and a click drops a sticky beside a prompt; “Bread, obviously” is typed on it. A second sticky gets “A tiny bakery van”.
10:15
Look back, against the clock
The Retrospective board has three columns: Went well, Could be better, Action items. Ana opens the Timer, sets it and presses Start. Everyone in the file sees the same countdown, so nobody needs a “two minutes left” in the chat. It can play lo-fi, piano or ambient music while it runs, if your team writes better with a soundtrack.
When the clock runs out, she opens Voting and starts a vote. Each person gets their dots, clicks the stickies they care about, and the badges count up live. End voting, and the results list them in order.
A retro board in PopCorn. Timer opens the countdown and Start runs it. Then Voting opens its panel, Start voting hands out the dots, three stickies are clicked, and End voting tallies the results.
10:35
Pick the fights
A vote is only useful if it ends the argument. A few details that make it do that:
TAKE IT BACK
OOPS!Click a vote badge to take your vote back. Changing your mind is cheaper than a second round.
ONE OWNER
GAVEL!Only whoever started the vote can end or clear it, so nobody closes the poll early by accident.
Copy results puts the ranked list on the clipboard. Ana pastes it into the meeting notes before anybody can relitigate it. Then stamps: Fire on the top three, Question on the one nobody understood.
A retro board in PopCorn, with stickies in three columns. Voting opens its panel and Start voting gives three votes. Three stickies are clicked, each gaining a vote badge, and End voting shows the results.
A brainstorm board in PopCorn. Stamp opens the stamp tray; Fire is picked and a sticky is stamped, then Love on another and Approve on a third. Stamps are ordinary layers, so they move with the board and export.
10:50
Plan the quarter
The winners move to the Now / Next / Later board, three lanes and, as the template puts it, nothing pretending to be a date. Lanes are frames, so dragging a sticky into one files it there.
The pile from the retro is a mess. Select it and press ⌘⌥T: Tidy up lines a scatter up into an even grid. Connectors stay attached to what they join, so “needs the new API” still points at the right sticky when somebody moves it.
The detail goes in comments. Press C, click the sticky, type, and @mention the owner. Mentions reach people as notifications, and the thread stays anchored to the board until someone resolves it. If Ana wants to see what one person is pointing at, she clicks their avatar and follows them.
An empty canvas. R draws four rectangles at uneven heights and gaps. All four are selected and Command-Option-T tidies them up into a clean row with equal gaps.
A landing page in Design. C picks the comment tool and a click on the hero places a comment: “Can we try a shorter headline?” is posted. The Comments panel opens on the right and Reply opens under it, “Trying three words now” is sent, and the thread is resolved with the tick.
11:20
The board becomes the deck
Here is where most workshops leak. In PopCraft nothing converts. Click PopCorn in the mode row again and the file is back in Design: same canvas, stickies still there, every design tool on the toolbar.
Ana makes a Slides file from the Report deck template in the same project, copies the winning stickies and the roadmap lanes across, and lays them on the slides. Each slide gets speaker notes, so whoever presents next quarter knows what each one meant.
A retro board in PopCorn with its stickies. PopCorn in the mode row, clicked again, switches the file back to Design: the board toolbar swaps for the design tools, and everything on the board is still there on the same canvas. A column is selected and the inspector shows it.
11:45
Show it, then send it
The play button presents fullscreen. The arrow beside it has the other two ways: in a window for screen share, so a video call shows the slides and not your notes, and Presenter view, with the current and next slide, your notes and a timer on your own screen.
Arrow keys move on, B blacks the screen out when the conversation wanders off the slides, and Esc ends the show. Presenting is a session: editing is paused until you exit, so nobody nudges a slide while you talk. Then the deck needs no export at all: it is a file in the project, and the link is already shared.
A pitch deck with its last slide selected. In the Design panel, Advance is set from On click to When animation ends, and Loop the show sits under it. Further down, the Speaker notes section holds the slide's notes, and a line is typed into it.
A pitch deck in Design. The arrow beside the play button lists the ways to present: fullscreen, in a window for screen share (where the browser can do it) and Presenter view. Present fullscreen fills the screen with the title slide; the right arrow moves on, W turns the screen white and back, and Esc ends the show.
More on decks, notes and the presenter view on email & slides.
12:00
What everyone leaves with
The morning owes people five things. None of them is a photo of a whiteboard.
- ✓The board itself. Still live at the same link. Nobody needs an export to look back.
- ✓The vote, in order. Copy results gives you the ranked list as text, ready for the notes.
- ✓Owners and dates. Comments with @mentions on the roadmap stickies reach people as notifications.
- ✓A readout deck. The Report deck, made from the board, with speaker notes for whoever presents it.
- ✓A named version. “After the offsite” in version history, so next quarter can see what you promised.
THE OLD WAY
Five tabs, or one file
| THE OLD WAY | IN POPCRAFT |
|---|---|
| A whiteboard app for the stickies | A Board file in PopCorn, from one of fifteen templates |
| A timer in a browser tab, shared on screen | A board timer everyone in the file sees |
| A poll in the chat, counted by hand | Dot voting on the stickies, tallied live |
| Retyping stickies into a slide tool | Switch to Design, copy them onto the Report deck |
| Emailing a PDF of the readout | Share the deck link. It is the same file everyone just used. |
FOR BIGGER ROOMS
Herding thirty people
SPOTLIGHT
LOOK!Everyone follows your view. The fastest way to move a big room to the right corner of a big board.
FOLLOW
ZOOM!Click someone's avatar to ride their viewport while they explain their sticky.
PLUGINS
POLL!Widgets add what a board does not have. A poll widget on the retro board is one of the examples.
A retro board with the Pow Poll example widget installed. Insert poll puts the widget in the middle of the view, and clicking its options casts votes: the bars fill in. The state is saved in the file, so everyone in it sees the same poll.
A retro board in PopCorn. Timer on the toolbar opens the countdown, +1 min twice sets seven minutes, and Start runs it. In a live file everyone sees the same countdown and hears one chime at zero.
YOUR TURN
Book the room. Skip the five tabs.
Click New file, pick Board, and start from Retrospective. Press S, type, and you are facilitating. The boards docs have every tool and shortcut.
ASKED & ANSWERED
Questions, answered
Does everyone need an account?
To edit or comment, yes: boards and collaboration come with signing in. Share lets you invite people by email or open the file to anyone with the link, with a role of edit, comment or view.
Can I run the timer and the vote for everyone?
Yes. The timer is a countdown everyone in the file sees, and voting gives each person a number of dots to spend, tallied live. Only the person who started a vote can end or clear it.
How many people fit on one board?
We have not published a number. A board is the same multiplayer canvas as any PopCraft file. Spotlight exists for big rooms: it asks everyone to follow your view so thirty people land in the same corner.
Do I have to export the board to make slides?
No. Switch the board to Design and the full toolset is there on the same canvas. Copy the stickies you need onto slides in a Slides file, such as the Report deck template, and present it.
What happens to the board after the workshop?
It stays a file at the same link, with its history. Name a version so you can find this exact state again, and keep working on it next week if you like.
Is there a facilitator mode?
Not a separate one. Facilitating is the same tools: Spotlight to herd, the timer to timebox, voting to decide, and follow to see what one person is looking at. Ninja mode hides you when you want to look around without an audience.
THE MANUAL, FOR THE DETAILS
DING! YOUR TURN.
Boards, votes, a timer and everyone live, then the deck. Free to start, in your browser or on your Mac.