Yesterday, Learntrends hosted a series of online conversations on boosting the performance of organizations through learning.
Our goal was honest dialog among as many members as possible. No commercials. No presentations. Few or no slides. Often, we threw three or four great people into an online fishbowl and let the conversation go where it would. At other times, participants simply talked about whatever was on their minds, with a host and time cop occasionally nudging the conversation back to the theme of improving the process of learning in organizations.
Two weeks before the event, I poured over feedback from members who attended our week-long online session last November. Many people had complained about the timing of sessions. Australians felt we were discriminating against them. I checked the profiles of our members and found a growing number of members hail from outside of the U.S.
How to serve them? It dawned on me that we could accommodate everyone’s schedule if we let the event follow the sun around the world. I decided to try to keep the conversations going for a full 24 hours.
Recruiting moderators and presenters was tougher than I’d figured on. I thought my personal contacts, the Learntrends membership, notices on Facebook/LinkedIn/Nings, and the Tweetstream would attract flocks of people. Not so. India, Australia, and Europe were woefully under-represented.
We encouraged people to drop by whenever they were free. They could join in for half an hour, then bail out. Participants did not need to register to attend.
This revolving door of attendance makes measurement tough, but I’ll guess that 250-300 people were involved at least part of the time. On Tuesday morning, we had 125 listening in. On Wednesday morning, we had 50-60. In between, some sessions had 30-40 people, others dwindled to one.
I learned a lot in the course of putting this together. (I’ve posted a list of lessons learned on the Learntrends site.)
- It’s important to inject fun into the event. Nancy White jumped in to lead a round of Pecha Kucha using slides she had never seen before. The spontaneity and spirit of fun raised energy levels. Need fun stuff sprinkled throughout.
- Staging an elaborate event is like putting on a t.v. show. You need a technology steward, a host, talent, and a producer. Multi-tasking doesn’t work well on something this ambitious.
- Speakers on a common topic should get to know one another and swap ideas on their approach in advance of the session.
- Pictures of speakers make an event more real. For Learntrends, we could have simply cut and pasted people’s photos from their community profile pages.
- Some people take commitments lightly. Several presenters never showed up. Some volunteer moderators disappeared when we tried to pin down times for them to cover.
- One of our moderators took on the persona of a radio DJ, asking questions, announcing times, and playing music during lulls. This was great. In the wee hours of the morning, another moderator conversed easily with anyone who dropped in, the talk-show therapist.
- We encountered numerous issues with sound. No matter how much prompting we provided, people showed up throughout without headphones, not having done an audio check, or with mediocre net connections. I want a system that’s as easy as tuning in a telephone conference call.
- We recorded the sessions directly off the web, i.e. outside of Elluminate. Recordings are going up now.
- Expanding the event from 3 hours to 24 only a dozen days before we went live was a stretch. I was hoping to catch the spirit and activism that pulled the first BarCamp together in less than a week. We didn’t make it. Our community bonds are not that strong. Except for the planning team on the Skype Chat, people didn’t get enthusiastic about the concept.
While this wasn’t an un-conference, it was one of the more informal events on learning I’ve taken part in. People were quite active in the chat sessions. Many participants grabbed the mic to ask questions and share opinions.
Highlights from the conversations are still bouncing around in my head, so I won’t try to summarize them hear. Also, I am dog-tired, having sat in on all but five hours of the 24 hours of run-time.
All in all, I’m satisfied with the outcome of our very full day, but I’ll await the evaluations of participants before passing judgment.
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From a less analytical perspective, I found the tone relaxed, people friendly, lots of both fun and interesting stuff in the chat (sometimes moreso than on the audio channel) … so it felt very human.
It was light on the visual. I think when we think “forget the powerpoint” we need to reframe what we do in terms of the visual. I was using my tiny netbook, so it was not conducive to playing with the whiteboard, but I think there are some practices we can play with in the future.
I enjoyed the Pecha Kucha session and think that this format, with its unique constraints, could be a model for our next conference. Maybe set the bar at somewhere between 1-5 pictures, with a standard format (JPG, PPT). Then give 10 minutes for presentation, with a timer, followed by 10 minutes for questions and then 10 minutes of transition time. That way we get 2 ideas per hour.
Another idea is setting up breakout rooms if anyone wants to carry on a conversation initiated in the main room. Maybe Twitter can play that role.
Just some thoughts, 24 hours later …
Hey Jay, I really enjoyed this event. It follows a format that’s been replicated many times since John Hibbs’s Global Learn Day events from the early ’90s. But none repeats the other, the voices and perspectives make each iteration unique, and each confirms the power of the network to infuse any occasion with intensive learning round the clock, whether or not there is a conference happening.
More such events, each with unique character and intensity, both free, are coming up. There is a SLANGUAGES conference this May 8-9 http://www.slanguages.net/. Then May 22-24 all can enjoy http://webheadsinaction.ning.com/ three days with minimal sleep and maximum interaction. Like yours, Jay, all are welcome at these events.