Your Members Are Subject Matter Experts
Hey – all of your members are subject matter experts. So why are we still offering conference sessions where there is a sage on the stage? And how is it that reprinting PowerPoint slides 2, 3, or 6 to a page is considered ok as a handout? How much great information is lost during a session because there is no way to collect useful tips, tricks, and resources that are in the heads of participants, let alone the “speaker”?
Enter, the wiki!
Learning guru, Elliott Masie’s Learning2006 conference has done a great job pushing the subject matter responsibilities out to the conference participants. He also has big names participating (and helping to draw in attendees).
The site is www.learning2006.com. Why are we so big on this conference?
(1) Because it is a for-profit entity successfully competing (and we would argue winning) the audience in the education technology conference space.
(2) Because it is highly experimental, and thus, successful
(3) Because it provides huge value to attendees.
What’s more, they already have 714 people registered and there are onlyl a handful of thought leaders announced on the conference’s home page. They haven’t even announced the session topics!
Last year we had about 10 association executives at the conference. Besides learning a lot about education technology from colleagues outside of the association space, the conference is a great case study in, well, conferencing – especially from a marketing perspective.
Thanks for the great comments about Learning 2006. We have been having great fun exploding the conference model. This year, I’ll be adding even more community activities for folks from the association world. I just accepted a positoin on the Center for Association Leadership Board and want to build more bridges between the association and corporate learning worlds. Thanks again! Elliott Masie PS. I found your blog by a search on Technorati!