4talent community workshop report
October 27, 2008 – 11:56 amThis is a brief report about 4talent’s inspiration session about online communities held in Birmingham, 26/10/08. I gave a short presentation alongside Emma Monks (Sulake), Ally Branley (Channel 4) and Heather Champ (flickr).
It was a great pleasure to meet them and see their presentations which were all very interesting indeed - there are few enough opportunities to meet one’s peers so they are greatly appreciated.
More importantly, all of the attendees got top marks for attitude as well. They had come prepared to talk openly to eachother, and bring questions and examples which made for good conversations, topical problem-solving and hopefully all-round learning.
Given the other speakers’ amazing communities, I chose to pick out some examples of smaller works I have seen in the last year which have impressed me for their bottom-up and life-supportive nature. Here is the presentation. It’s all a bit visual, but you can download it from slideshare; all the relevant links discussed during the day are in the notes sections.
As well as the presentation I did a mini-mindmap session, asking people to write 5 words that meant ‘community’ to them and stick them on the wall. This is a quick and easy technique to help people get a map of what eachother is thinking about and I highly recommend it.
Nick Booth kindly grouped them for us so we could see any similarities in our thoughts. We found that we all roughly thought similar things:
- People
- Conversations
- Social space
- Relationships
A few others emerged including mobilisation, trust, minority views, power, meritocracy, disruption. Interestingly, no-one brought up technology or money although we talked about them quite a lot as the day progressed.
(post-it notes from mini-mindmap, 4talent inspiration session, 26/10/08)
I think my favourite post-it of the day was ‘Confidence-building’:
(post-it notes from mini-mindmap, 4talent inspiration session, 26/10/08)
It was a cracking day. I learnt a lot, had thorough conversations, met some good people and heard more real stories from the frontlines of all this online community stuff… Love it!
Many thanks to Mars, Dan and Antonio from Maverick for being our hosts.
Sharing is caring, all, keep it up.
8 Responses to “4talent community workshop report”
Very interesting and enjoyable slideshow. Thanks for sharing it Ed. I’ve made it my slideshow of the week - see sidebar of http://www.jackmartinleith.com.
By Jack Martin Leith on Oct 27, 2008
Many thanks Ed for leading an excellent workshop.
By Dan on Oct 28, 2008
Hi Ed,
Great to have you, although I can’t claim to have had anything to do with the hosting, I was very much a participant on Sunday.
It was a great day and I really enjoyed meeting you and the others. Hope to have you up in Brum again soon.
A
By Antonio Gould on Oct 28, 2008
Great session Ed, thoroughly enjoyed and your energy levels and enthusiasm are off the scale, brilliant! Learned plenty as well.
Looking forward to catching up again soon.
Regards
JT
By John Taplin on Nov 4, 2008
Thank You for a really engaging day. I learnt a lot and came away motivated and inspired! Lots of ideas buzzing which I want to get off the ground now.
Rebecca
By Rebecca Cadwallader on Nov 4, 2008
Thanks all
By edmittance on Nov 4, 2008
I’m awfully late in sending my thanks, but thanks
By Tom on Nov 9, 2008