To those of you who attended our UNconference session on Sunday, thank you! We
had 19 breakout sessions, 3 lightning talks, and countless new connections and
friends.
We asked UNconference attenders for two things: to write down the top communications issue/concern on a name tag, and to start up and lead a breakout session. Altogether, you shared a real-time list of what we're collectively dealing with, and where we need help and more expertise.
Your top issues and concerns:
We asked UNconference attenders for two things: to write down the top communications issue/concern on a name tag, and to start up and lead a breakout session. Altogether, you shared a real-time list of what we're collectively dealing with, and where we need help and more expertise.
Your top issues and concerns:
- Employees often don’t care about what’s important to management and vice versa
- What role(s) should communications play in an enterprise 2.0?
- How do I convince my executives to blog?
- Employee participation in online dialogue
- Getting through to staff who believe they are not being communicated to
- Tracking and measuring the impact of social media
- Is social media too social?
- Avoiding the social media train wreck
- What to do when another department “owns” social media and is not strategic
- Where social media fits for our audience
- Dealing with complacency and cowardice
- Keeping up with techn
As part of a longer post over on IABC's InSession conference blog, I've
made five suggestions for leading a kick-butt session at our
unconference. I'm sharing that advice here on our grou.ps network, too:
- Share the mic. Unconferences are very much about group collaboration and participation. Spend a few minutes sharing your experience or position on a topic, and then throw open the discussion and get everyone involved.
- Ask good questions. You’re not expected to to have all the answers. Keep probing your colleagues for their insights.
- Go out on a limb. Have a topic that was “too hot” for the formal IABC conference? Here’s your chance to stir things up with a crowd that will embrace fresh and even off-the-wall ideas.
- Capture the conversations. We’ve created an
Chris Betcher, Teacher, ICT integrator, blogger, podcaster, author had this to
say about the UNconference experience. Listen to his audio
boo
The UNconference is your chance for a little “show and tell”. Go ahead, grab your laptops, netbooks, blackberries, iPhones, iPads (if you’re lucky enough to have one already) bring your flip cameras, digital and video cameras, audio recorders - come packing your case studies, your favourite resources, your examples, your burning questions, your best practices and join us for
Sunday's UNconference session - Emerging Communication Channels.
Participation is the word of the day. If using the latest technology and a little “show and tell” helps us to tell or capture our stories, then that’s exactly what we’ll do.
TorontoTalks is grateful to Shel Holz for this recent
blog post and podcast that explains a little more about how the
UNconference came to be and what you can expect. Have a peek and a
listen!
Came across
this post on tips for getting the most of the conference. While I'd
definitely add, attend our UNconference of course, I'd also suggest:
Making a list of those people who are on your "must meet" list and try to schedule a time to connect in advance,
Go with a specific purpose - so many sessions, so may topics/streams, be clear on what information you wish to gain from these sessions,
Participate in the networking and social activities, and finally,
Share your experience and new found knowledge back at the office upon your return...
What are your tips for maximizing the conference experience?
Making a list of those people who are on your "must meet" list and try to schedule a time to connect in advance,
Go with a specific purpose - so many sessions, so may topics/streams, be clear on what information you wish to gain from these sessions,
Participate in the networking and social activities, and finally,
Share your experience and new found knowledge back at the office upon your return...
What are your tips for maximizing the conference experience?
To ensure the best possible experience for folks attending our UNconference
session, we've decided to limit attendance to 200 people.
Why?
Why?
- Productive group conversation: we have one (very big) room for the session, within which we'll break into sub-groups for breakout discussions. We've designed the schedule with four 25-minute segments. During each segment, six different sub-groups will be meeting, led by whomever wants to lead a segment. With one room and 200 people, we hope that we'll enough room between groups to make for great dialogue.
- Time is finite: we're packing 24 breakout sessions and 3 lightning talks into 3 hours, and it'd be tough to manage more than 200 bodies moving
Apparently grou.ps is having some glitches, preventing replies
to forum threads and status updates (as far as I can tell so far).
I'm tracking the issue with support. In the meantime, I suggest we use blogs and wiki pages for content and discussions.
I'm tracking the issue with support. In the meantime, I suggest we use blogs and wiki pages for content and discussions.
An unconference inside a conference? Yes, it sounds oxymoronic, but at the
single best gathering of communications pros worldwide, why not?
Last year's IABC world conference was my first. Thanks to Debbie Moore, I had the chance to speak on a panel about using internal social media. During the conference, I met a ton of great people, but I found we had little time outside the conference schedule to meetup and chat spontaneously. I suggested we tweetup, but we ran out of time.
With that experience in mind, a small group of us--Mitch Popilchak, Linda Johannesson, Christopher Swan, Bryan Person, and me--decided to submit the unconference as a conference session for the 2010 conference. We were accepted, and we're rolling with it!
Some have suggested that if it's not free or very cheap, it's not an unconference. Unless you're meeting in a city park, it's going to be tough to make any kind of...... [ Read the rest of this story ]
Last year's IABC world conference was my first. Thanks to Debbie Moore, I had the chance to speak on a panel about using internal social media. During the conference, I met a ton of great people, but I found we had little time outside the conference schedule to meetup and chat spontaneously. I suggested we tweetup, but we ran out of time.
With that experience in mind, a small group of us--Mitch Popilchak, Linda Johannesson, Christopher Swan, Bryan Person, and me--decided to submit the unconference as a conference session for the 2010 conference. We were accepted, and we're rolling with it!
Some have suggested that if it's not free or very cheap, it's not an unconference. Unless you're meeting in a city park, it's going to be tough to make any kind of...... [ Read the rest of this story ]
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