Brandon Hall Research Conference Community

Next week at this time I’ll be at the Innovations in Learning Conference in sunny Santa Clara. Yay!! Harold Jarche and I will be facilitating a pre-conference workshop (“boot camp”) on Sept. 24.

I’ve found in the past that when I’ve facilitated a ’101′/intro-type/boot-camp workshops, the e-learning readiness of attendees has varied greatly. It makes it difficult to plan. Plus, you generally don’t have a very good idea of who your audience is when you’re offering workshops to the public. To adddress this, Harold and I contacted several attendees last week and – as in my past experience and no surprise – found varied levels of readiness and interests.  We have decided to break many topics down into small chunks and offer them up menu-style to participants. Should make things very flexible and loose. In some ways we’ll be serving up the various dichotomies that we blog about – formal vs. informal, PLEs vs. LMSs, etc. Reminds me of the Saturday Night Live skits with Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin…point – counterpoint but (hopefully ; ) without the “Janet, you ignorant *&%!…”

Harold and I have organized and collaborated using Google docs, box.net, email, Skype, telephone, and a conference community (you must be an attendee to be part of the community).

I’ve been getting the conference community up and running over the past few weeks and am happy with the amount of participation and interaction. I think connecting with people before a conference begins can really make a difference in the conference experience. With limited time, it can be difficult to network face-to-face. And that’s a big part of going to conferences. We’re using Leverage Software for the community. It’s exciting to see who’s coming and the people map helps make connections with those who have similar interests.

The people map puts you in the center. People with similar interests are closer to you and you can just hover your mouse of the pin and it’ll show you their profile. From there you can set up meetings, chat, send email, etc. The community also supports polling, chat, advertising, blogging, messaging, and groups. Blogging and group discussions have RSS and email support.

I’ll be blogging live next week – here, in the community, and on the Brandon Hall conference blog. Blogelicious. We’re also using a wiki, twittering, maybe a little Facebook sharing…whatever it takes to keep the the communication channels open. Yay!! You can register here. Here’s my quick connect card for those attending.

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