Thursday, April 23, 2009

Online Conference Formats

We've just seen an interesting experience with Jay Cross having pulled together a 24 hour, worldwide discussion on the future of learning at Learn Trends. You can find some of the recordings here.

There's a discussion thread with feedback, and you can read some of Jay's thoughts on doing this. It had very good attendance and the quality of people was very high.

We encouraged people to drop by whenever they were free. They could join in for half an hour, then bail out. Participants did not need to register to attend.

This revolving door of attendance makes measurement tough, but I’ll guess that 250-300 people were involved at least part of the time. On Tuesday morning, we had 125 listening in. On Wednesday morning, we had 50-60. In between, some sessions had 30-40 people, others dwindled to one.


We are deciding what we will do going forward. We plan to hold sessions in May and June. Topics are TBD. And likely the topic will partly decide what format we use.

But I very much would like your help in brainstorming what else we might consider doing with the format?

Please help with ideas or pointers to examples.

Also, if you are interested in future conferences, please go sign up on the Learn Trends Ning Group. We will make sure we notify you of dates and topics.