Every workshop on Wayfield is one of two structures, set once at the workshop level: session-based or event-based. The distinction isn’t about size — a session-based workshop can be small or huge — it’s about whether participants choose what they attend, or everyone attends the same thing.
A session-based workshop gives participants a schedule of sessions to choose from — like a conference agenda. There can be several session options at a given time slot, organized into tracks, and each participant builds their own personalized schedule across the days by picking the ones they want. A photography weekend with Landscape, Portrait, and Studio tracks running in parallel — where one participant does two Landscape sessions and a Portrait session while another does the reverse — is session-based. Overlapping sessions are never both selectable at once, so nobody accidentally double-books themselves, and capacity is enforced the moment someone selects a session, not after.
An event-based workshop is a single event with one shared lineup. Everyone registers for the whole thing, not for individual sessions, and everyone attends each session together — session selection isn’t part of the experience because there’s nothing to choose between. A one-day intensive, a keynote, or any workshop where the whole group moves through the same schedule together is event-based.
This is set at the workshop level because it changes real behavior, not just the label: session-based workshops get the schedule-builder, overlap detection, and personal-schedule view; event-based workshops keep things simpler — registration is the only step, and check-in only requires that someone is registered, with no session selection to track.
Most organizers know immediately which one they’re running. A multi-track event with real choice is session-based. Everything else — a single class, a one-day intensive, a retreat where the whole group does the same thing in the same order — is event-based.
This matters because most workshop tools force the choice early: a simple registration form that breaks down the moment you add a second track, or an event platform that’s overkill for a single afternoon class. A pottery teacher running one class on Saturday and a photography school running a four-day expedition with dozens of concurrent sessions are using the identical system — just at different scale. Start small. Grow into it. Nothing about the underlying structure changes.
