References and credits
Where the ideas come from.
Anything on this site, in the keynote, or in the printed handouts that is not ours is cited here. Anything that is ours is labelled as ours. Numbered markers in the copy, like [1], link straight to the matching entry below.
Spot something that should be credited differently, or a source we have read wrong? Tell us and we will fix it in the same week. Send a note.
The sources
[1]
Book
Parker, Priya. The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Riverhead Books, 2018.
How we use it: The premise that gatherings are designed rather than hosted by default, and that purpose comes before agenda. Our Creative Meeting Canvas owes its shape to this idea.
www.priyaparker.com/book-art-of-gathering[2]
Research
Edmondson, Amy C. "Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams." Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 2, 1999, pp. 350-383.
How we use it: Why a room where people feel safe to speak outperforms a room that is merely well run. It underpins the welcome, participation, and recognition questions in the Meeting Reflection Index.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2307/2666999[3]
Research
Rozovsky, Julia. "The five keys to a successful Google team." re:Work, Google, 2015.
How we use it: Popularised the finding that psychological safety is the strongest predictor of team effectiveness. We cite it as corroboration of Edmondson, not as an independent study.
rework.withgoogle.com/en/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness[4]
Book
Amabile, Teresa, and Steven Kramer. The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. Harvard Business Review Press, 2011.
How we use it: The evidence base for small, visible progress as a motivator. It is the research reason our unit of change is one small experiment rather than a relaunch.
store.hbr.org/product/the-progress-principle/11167[5]
Book
Imai, Masaaki. Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success. McGraw-Hill, 1986.
How we use it: Continuous small improvement as a practice rather than a project. Our language of experiments and iteration comes from this tradition.
www.kaizen.com/what-is-kaizen[6]
Book
Clear, James. Atomic Habits. Avery, 2018.
How we use it: Habit design principles behind our weekly cadence: make the next action small, obvious, and attached to an existing ritual (the club meeting).
jamesclear.com/atomic-habits[7]
Article
Duhigg, Charles. "What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team." The New York Times Magazine, 25 Feb. 2016.
How we use it: Accessible summary of the team-effectiveness work above, useful as further reading for workshop participants.
www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html[8]
Research
Microsoft. Work Trend Index Annual Report. Microsoft, 2022-2024 editions.
How we use it: Context on meeting load and meeting fatigue in professional settings. We reference the direction of these findings, and we do not quote a specific percentage from them on stage.
www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index[9]
Program and trademarks
Toastmasters International. Pathways learning experience, club meeting roles, and officer resources. Toastmasters International.
How we use it: Meeting roles, contest structure, and club officer vocabulary referenced throughout the tools. Toastmasters International, Pathways, DTM, and related marks are trademarks of Toastmasters International. Creative Club Lab is an independent project by a member and is not endorsed by, affiliated with, or an official product of Toastmasters International.
www.toastmasters.org[10]
Imagery
Manuel, Dai. Personal photography archive, 2009-2026. Used by permission of the photographer and subjects.
How we use it: Every photograph in the keynote deck, the handouts, and this site. All first-party imagery, graded to one editorial look. Full per-image credits ship in the deck asset credits file.
[11]
Type and software
Fraunces (Undercase Type, Flavia Zimbardi, Phaedra Charles) and Inter (Rasmus Andersson), both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
How we use it: Site and document typography. Both families are licensed for commercial and embedded use, which is why the pre-upload deck can embed them for the AV team.
openfontlicense.org[12]
Type and software
Lucide icon library, ISC License.
How we use it: The icon set across the app and the printable handouts.
lucide.dev/license
What is ours, and what it is not
Our own claims, stated plainly.
These are practitioner tools and first-hand stories. They are useful, they are tested in real rooms, and they are not peer-reviewed findings. We would rather say so than borrow authority we have not earned.
- "Make your next meeting 2% better."
- A design heuristic, not a measured effect. The number is deliberately small to make action likely. We have never claimed a study produced it.
- Meeting MRI (Meeting Reflection Index)
- An original ten-question reflection tool built by Creative Club Lab. It is a coaching prompt, not a validated psychometric instrument, and scores are self-reported by the person running it.
- The Creative Meeting Canvas
- An original one-page planner, influenced by the gathering-design and small-wins sources cited on this page.
- Club stories from Vancouver, Bali, Dubai, Tokyo, and Toronto
- First-hand accounts from Dai Manuel's own 15+ years of club visits, coaching, and speaking. Details are recounted from personal experience and notes. No club is named in a way that identifies a member without consent.
- Testimonials on the speaker page
- Verbatim quotes supplied by the named clients, used with their permission. Nothing is paraphrased to strengthen it.
Standing and permissions
Trademarks
Toastmasters International, Pathways, DTM, and related marks belong to Toastmasters International. Creative Club Lab is an independent project built by a member. It is not endorsed by, affiliated with, or an official product of Toastmasters International. Every other brand named on this site belongs to its owner.
Images and quotes
All photography is first-party, from Dai Manuel's own archive, used with the permission of the people in frame. Testimonials are verbatim and used with the permission of the person quoted. No stock imagery is presented as a club photo.
Reuse of our material
Toolbox PDFs, the Canvas, and the handouts are free to print and use inside your club. Please keep the footer credit and the link to this page. For paid, corporate, or district-wide use, just ask first.