Event Camp National ... By the Tweets

Image courtesy Chethstudios.net

Christine Melendes, CAE, PCMA’s director of member relations, returns with the second installment  of a three-part series on the second annual Event Camp National Conference,  held in Chicago February 11-13.  (Her first post is here.)

One of the beautiful things about Twitter -- and having a great group of people to follow at an event -- is that they oftentimes capture key nuggets of information from a speaker before you can.  

So I have recapped some of the tweets from Event Camp (#ecnc) that still are resonating with me a month later. I’ve added my own two cents on the sessions at the end.

Here are Saturday's speakers, followed by key tweets -- ones that get right to the core of the speaker's message:

Speaker: Glenn Thayer

@carolyn_ray

The virtual attendee needs to step up and take responsibility for their experience . Tell us what you want! #ecnc

@mitchellbeer

Repurpose content to drive online traffic for the next year. - Thayer #ecnc #ectc

Speaker: Chris Brogan

@VelChain

Use headline tips from TMZ, Cosmo or Oprah to draw people into your community says @chrisbrogan #ecnc

Speaker: Hank Wasiak

@JessicaLevin

I love the positive examples that @hankwasiak is showing. Positivity is powerful. #Ecnc

@lizkingevents: Coach youself. Don't criticize. Think of how you can learn and be aspirational. #ecnc #lke

@JeffHurt

Look at others as an asset & change the way you see relationships says @hankwasiak #ecnc

@mjcarter

Use the 5:1 ratio: Focus on 5 good things for every 1 bad thing #ECNC #eventprofs

Big Ideas, Small Bucks

Think you need a huge budget to create an interactive, lively exhibit booth? This booth, promoting EventCamp East Coast at BizBash New York Expo this week, used brown kraft paper and permanent markers and asked the questions: "What was your worst event experience?" and "What does the event of the future look like?" to create a community conversation.

It's also a great example of brand alignment: EventCamp East Coast will follow the crowdsourced meeting model designed by conference consultant Adrian Segar, author of Conferences That Work.

Failure Is An Option

Shaping Space: The d.school's Environments Collaborative from Stanford d.school on Vimeo.

I was inspired today to do a little digging on innovative spaces by the announcement that Event Camp has chosen the Catalyst Ranch in Chicago for its annual meeting in 2011. The only word to describe the Catalyst Ranch is funky -- it's filled with toys and cushions, and decorated with artifacts from 35 different countries. If you want, you can swing in a hammock. Not a safe choice, but, it seems to me, a fitting one for Event Camp, a grassroots gathering of event professionals, which is making a name for itself as a testbed for meeting design. (Read about it here.) Great example: at Event Camp Twin Cities, scheduled for Sept. 8 and 9, organizers will experiment with trading in rows of chairs for balls. And who knows what Event Camp East Coast, scheduled Nov. 12-13 in Philadelphia, has up its sleeve. (The dates were just announced on the #eventsprofs Twitter group this week, with details to come.)

My search for insight about the role of space in innovation led me to a comment that surprised me, particularly coming from Scott Witthoft, co-director of the Stanford d.school's Environments Collaborative, which designed the d.school space. The new center opened this spring after five years of research and planning.

People ask Witthoft all the time how to make their spaces more innovative, he said. "I think people look to space to solve problems of innovation that are outside of space ... Sometimes you have to suck it up and try something you haven't done before and be willing to fail."