Got back from a conference on Saturday where members and I were attendees. Aside from some committee meetings and speaking engagements, we were mostly free to float into and out of sessions we found interesting. I intentionally stayed away from the social media sessions, preferring instead to attend speeches by government officials, economists, political analysts, and trend spotters.
A few of my members, some of the most social media savvy people I know, decided to attend a social media marketing workshop for an extra fee that was held off-site (several miles away) from one of the biggest names in the industry. They arrived, set up shop, and proceeded to leave only a few minutes into the session.
On the car ride back to the convention center they agreed, "We are not the audience."
Kevin Holland has been on a tear recently about education led by people who actually do the things they teach about. I could not agree more. By and large, do-ers have more intimate knowledge about the subjects they talk about and can usually get you closer to implementation than the professional speakers can. The trouble with sessions led by do-ers instead of professional speakers is that do-ers aren’t — well — professional speakers. They say "Um" a lot, have lackluster stage presence, and get threes on their evaluations. So they don’t get asked back. And that’s too bad.
Unconferences and other types of peer-to-peer learning opportunities can really help your association meet the needs of these advanced learners. By providing this kind of education, you turn the experts into both presenters and attendees. You convene the best thinkers, giving them an opportunity to teach and learn. Aside from hiring the most advanced minds in your industry to speak (which can get expensive and repetitive), peer-to-peer learning is just about the only way to satisfy expert learners.
The rub is figuring out how to implement these programs in ways that don’t cannibalize other sessions, cost a lot of money, or under-deliver on attendees’ expectations. Some ways I’ve done this…
- Co-locate the unconference with a larger meeting.
- Be clear about the content of the peer-to-peer learning session. Make it obvious that it is a participatory event.
- Find sponsors and/or hold the meeting in donated space.
And don’t miss my ten steps to promoting a collaborative learning session.
Tags: unconferences, learning, marketing, associations
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You could have mentioned me by name.
I also made a video at NAR addressing this very subject. I’ll be posting it soon, probably tomorrow. Still digging out today (and sick).
Actually, I think that one of the problems with do-ers is that many of them aren’t, well, teachers. Being a teacher is even different from being a presenter. The ability to convey knowledge in such a way that others can easily acquire it is a skill in and of itself. Not all do-ers have it.
The more peer-to-peer experiences you can provide, the more easy it is to identify the do-ers that also make good teachers.
Great post! Another option to get the most out of experts with first-hand experience is to invite one of the professional speakers to be “in conversation” with the expert or panel of experts. As a former journalist, now speaker who loves to learn from expert I enjoy this opportunity as much as being a keynoter.
At 14 conferences so far I’ve spoken, then been “in conversation” with an expert for that audience, then led a panel – to be sure each person had a chance to speak and there was time for audience questions. If it can happen in one day I and some other speakers enjoy the variation.
But Ben, it takes awhile to get meeting planners to consider these options, in my experience. They are not “traditional”.
Making meetings more interactive in ways that generate more value is a win for attendees, speakers and those “ah”, “um” ‘well” experts who can offer some of the most valuable tips – when answering questions.
Also it would be fun to see sessions with brief presentations by members and other experts, perhaps Pecha Kucha style. Shining a spotlight on more participants in ways that make them shine enables all of us to find the attendees with whom we might collaborate, seek advice or help.
To a certain extent, it seems the speaker/do-er dilemma argues for greater use of facilitators who bring a combination of intelligence and general subject knowledge along with strong platform and audience management skills. While not the same learning experience as the unconference, we’ve seen good facilitators deliver a more traditional, but high quality educational experience with a panel of rather dry, “um” speaking but highly qualified individuals. We wish more conference coordinators would take this path.
I have to say that SocialDevCamp East did an EXCELLENT job of peer to peer learning. It was probably one of the best events I’ve attended ever, I walked away with so much to use and was only able to make 3 out of the 5 sessions. I think peer to peer learning also breaks down that barrier between a speaker and audience member. As opposed to the presenter being an “expert” on the subject, the peer to peer is more about the persons experience, an open safe place to ask questions and let the group solve the problem. I wish there were more learning experiences like SocialDevCamp East. For those who are interested you can use the hashtag #sdc2 on Twitter Search to see what happened all day long.