ABSTRACT
The first “workshop” meeting with Steve de Shazer was in the spring of 2002. I was a second-year student in my Masters program for Marriage and Family Therapy at Purdue University Calumet, and was invited by a fellow student to help out at the workshop. I was only one of two students that were allowed to volunteer at the first workshop, due to the exclusivity of the group and intense focus on one theory–solution-focused therapy. My expectation was that I would contribute to the workshop like I always had contributed as a grad student volunteering at workshops or conferences: organizing chairs and materials, making sure the lights were dimmed at precisely the correct time and reduced to the hue preferred by the presenter, and other similarly small but necessary tasks. Little did I know at that time that my involvement would far exceed any volunteer work I had ever done for a meeting of this nature.
