Social lubricants and Psycostimulants: More conference thoughts

[Bear with me - long setup to the payoff]

So I may have mentioned this a few thousand times but I am actually not an instructional designer. I don't play one on TV. That being said, I have taught classes, built curriculum, and so on but as an anthropologist and a historian. I have also been ranting a bit about conferences of late. Then I went to the eLearning Guild's excellent, Learning Solutions conference and saw a couple of things - the 1st was Ellen Wagner's highly illegal and excellent presentation on the Secret Handshake of Instructional Designers and the second was Heidi Fisk's (co-founder of the Guild) willingness to engage in discussions about what could be done differently at conferences to create richer, more compelling experiences.

Then the whole PECHA KUCHA mess got going when I read this post from Lorenz Khazaleh on "Beware: No Pecha Kucha allowed without consent from Tokyo" and wow, that kind of got some attention. That post led me to a couple of great posts by Greg Downey on "Thoughts on Conference Organizing" and "Why Do Speed Presentations?" These in turn led me back to "What's the point of anthropology conferences?" by Lorenz. 

Phew.I guess the whole point of all of this is that I have been thinking a lot about conferences and its interesting to me to read conference experiences from the other half of my life (the academic side) because although I do have degrees in anthropology and history - I actually only ever attended 1 academic conference (A military history one co-hosted by the CIA and my fav memory is of the luminaries of my profession, lined up 8 deep in front of the counter at the CIA gift store).

A couple of the highlights leapt out at me from these posts:

(Greg) - Keynote speakers matter a lot.

Oh yeah. Not just should the speakers align with the focus of the conference, I think one great idea would be to have a session with the keynoter after the big speech. Clearly, if the keynoter is super popular, this could present some logistical problems but the chance to have a real talk w these people would be very cool.

(Greg) - Sweat the details - especially the conference program and handouts. 

Terrific. Now look, I understand that the program is a source of revenue for the conference organizers but give the planet a break. The Guild did a GREAT job with the iPhone app version of the guide.

(Greg) - Food, food, food.

Amen brother. Listen, I know - food costs and hotels are incredibly brazen at what they'll charge for food - but I think for too long we've missed the social opportunity that food offers. I mean, we all finish sessions and then head to the winds for dinner or worse...breakfast...please...no more "breakfasts" with no protein at all. I know, protein costs but c'mon, we have to be able to do something. Greg Downey even says "food pulled the conference together, creating opportunities to talk, meet people, lightening the mood, reinvigorating the audience, and generally serving as a social lubricant and psycostimulant."

(Lorenz) - Don't neglect the social.

I know - I just kind of touched on this above but its important. We all know we don't really go back to conferences for the sessions but for the people (SHOCKER right?). So why not pay more attention to that important aspect? Now academic conferences are different - I know that AERA sessions go late and Lorenz, in talking about one anthropology conference, says "the lectures actually lasted until 11 o'clock at night! I especially enjoyed these less formal after-dinner lectures." Go check out that post and scroll down to the picture of the guys sitting around with beers having a debate on shrines and tolerances - I don't want to really geek out here but c'mon that kind of interaction is really attractive especially compared to more 'sit in chair, face forward' sessions.

To sum up then....lessen the carbon footprint, increase the food and the chances for social interaction and try to set up something so that people can interact in smaller venues with the headlining keynoters. Let's also think about ways to maybe stretch the day...maybe move the program forward but do it in a different way...maybe some activity (a little music?) to help loosen things up and move across a liminal space to a different kind of social interaction...if the conversations are important...do more to support that. 

Comments

[Ellen Wagner]

Hi Mark, just a head's up note to you - my pecha kucha wasn't illegal. I had been in touch with Jean Snow from the Pecha Kucha Foundation who told me what I needed to do.