May
17
2009
Yesterday I joined about 100 others attending ChangeCamp Ottawa ‘09 – an unconference focused on re-imagining government and citizenship in the age of participation. Unconferences give participants the opportunity to wield much more power than regular conferences by allowing them to decide what will be discussed. So, after opening remarks by one of the organizers, we were invited to the podium to “pitch” our session idea to the circle of participants – including picking which time slot during the day it should be. (Luckily there were fewer suggested sessions than time slots so there was no need for the group to decide which ideas were more worthy.)
The ideas were then posted on a wall on “the grid” for all to see and choose from – and they were posted immediately to the online grid on the ChangeCamp wiki. As ChangeCamp founder, Mark Kuznicki, said in his talk at Social Media Breakfast Ottawa 9, this live creation of content is the main objective of ChangeCamp – and ChangeCamp Ottawa got behind that objective 100%. Online discussions happened before, during and after the event using email, Twitter, blogs, the ChangeCamp wiki and a Pathable social network site. At the event, there were people live blogging and Tweeting (using Twitter), and using laptops to upload content live to the ChangeCamp wiki and their personal sites all over the web. There were people capturing the event on Flip video cameras and audio recorders – their own and some supplied by the organizers. There was an eventbot video station, much like CityTV’s Speaker’s Corner video booth, where people were encouraged to go and talk about the sessions they had pitched and attended.
This live capturing encouraged all of us to get stuff up right away, or as soon as possible, and addressed the common problem of everyone leaving with good intentions to upload their content later – and then never doing so.
I sat down with two very happy and tired co-organizers Ian Capstick and Mark Faul after the successful event to chat about their online effort.
Enjoy the conversation.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:15 — 11.2MB)
June 1st, 2009 at 7:35 pm
[...] ConsciousImages podcast by Robin Browne [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 8:33 pm
[...] ConsciousImages podcast by Robin Browne [...]