I’m at BarcampBank Seattle - a great way to spend a Saturday. About 35 people are spending their Saturday in a 3rd floor open office/conference space in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. While the building is over 120 years old, the ideas are freshly baked as this morning.
Some individuals have brought topics they’re here to discuss. A lot more of us are here to hear interesting ideas. Since this particular FooCamp-style event is about banking, there are a lot of people here to talk about issues like Credit Union customer satisfaction, community-based currencies, new online financial exchange systems.
I’m looking to use this Foo-Camp/Bar-Camp model in the local American Society For Training & Development chapter’s “Future of Training” conference September 25.
In the old-style seminar model you recruited “good” speakers, based on their reputation or their business affiliation, and they came and stood in front of a room and showed their PowerPoint presentation graphics, engaged the audience, demonstrated an online simulation or how to do something. They were funny. They were authoritative. Told great stories. They were comparable to your best professor in college.
In the new model someone may do a presentation or just start doodling words and diagrams on a wall of white board, and asking the audience engaging questions, and then people start kicking in ideas. They may show new software or a website, and engage discussion on it. The topics at this camp range from “The iPhone in economic exchange” or “Community money systems - the neo tribalism.”
One Seattle credit union marcom manager challenged a group by saying that if your customer satisfaction score isn’t a 9 on a scale of 10, you won’t receive referrals from your customers anymore? Know who gets a 9? Harley Davidson.
BARCAMP LEARNING EDGE
People may learn more, because they’re sitting in a particular room on a topic in which they’re interested, asking questions, challenging each other.
The topics may be about tight, narrow questions - because there may be 10 topics going on at once in different corners - compared with the old model where there are maybe 2 to 4 presenters in break-out sessions.
The people who are attracted to such events are highly curious - they’re way out on the front edge of the bell-shaped-curve of learners.
I’m curious about what portion of the general audience of an ASTD chapter will come to an event like this without knowing much about the specific topics or discussions or demonstrations in advance? How can you get people to commit to moderating? How can you get people to post “Topics I’d Like To See Discussed”?
Time for a big wide-open SurveyMonkey query?
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