Hey. :)

Craft a joke that's relevant to the situation. Touch on the core essence of why everyone is attending, or make light of something that's happening in current news, preferably in a context that relates to your subject matter.

As a backup you can alway open with asking people why they're attending and what they're hoping to get out of the workshop.

Hope that was helpful.

My specialty is developing Digital Creative Strategies for Marketing Campaigns.

A great starting point is Google's Think Insights Toolbox: http://www.google.com/think/products-tools/

Using the data from those tools you can glean insight out of a brand which you can then use to come up with ideas that can be refined into concepts. A concept is when an idea takes on the shape of an execution, like a website or app.

Let me know if that was helpful.

I work with specialists to concept and design digital products.

I recommend you learn to sketch your ideas if not wireframe them, otherwise you're handing ownership over to someone else and will need to make concessions as they infuse it with they're vision.

In lieu of that, it sounds like you're looking for a User Experience Designer. Someone that can understand your product idea and translate it into an execution. A User Experience Designer will put themselves in the shoes of your potential customer and design an experience that fulfills their needs in the form of Wireframes. Those Wireframes can be provided to a User Interface Designer or a Front-End Developer to begin building a clickable Prototype.

Let me know if that was helpful or if there are any other questions I can answer for you.