EventCamp Wrap Up - Fishbowls in NYC

EventCamp10 was an Unconference that took place in New York City on February 6, 2010.

EventCamp Background

EventCamp 2010, was BarCamp-style gathering for event professionals to share best practices and learn new strategies to create a successful event.

Tony! Tony! Tony! The “unconference” is being hosted as part of Social Media Week, five days of events involving the best and brightest in the New York tech community with the goal of educating and encouraging social media practices across all sectors.

It was the first industry gathering of its kind, offering a low-cost alternative to the pricey annual conference and allowing attendees the option to generate their own content, encouraging participation and allowing for a more interactive environment. Approximately half the session topics will be pre-determined, and aim to assist planners in utilizing social media and technology in event planning, execution, business development and networking.

How I Got Involved

I was fortunate to be asked by Jessica Levin to help sponsor the event with our Conference 2.0™ Event community. However, she wanted me on board as a panelist to share my thoughts on how to create an event community and make it successful.

Event Communities Work!

The coolest thing about using the EventCamp2010 Community, Twitter and other social media tools was that most of the people in attendance already felt like they knew each other before walking into the sessions.

Most of these people (the attendees) had never met each other in person but we all were acting like a reunion of old friends. I’ve been promoting and advocating for the use of social media at events for the last year in my professional life at Omnipress, but it all came full circle when it came time to participate as a speaker and attendee.

My wife and I arrived in NYC Friday night and when we walked in to the Hotel bar to meet all of my EventCamp buddies it was like an episode of Romper Room. I See Jeff Hurt, Traci Browne, Emilie Barta, Robert Swanwick. And I See Greg Ruby and Samuel Smith. And that was just the first 90 seconds.

Fishbowl

A fishbowl in Madison, WI is a very large adult drink with many straws for a group of people to refresh their thirsty bodies. In NYC at EventCamp, SamualSmith introduced me to a different kind of Fishbowl – An interactive discussion. I can’t say it any better, so here’s what Sam said about how the fishbowl works:

“My session was a collaborative session that used the fishbowl format. In this session, I turned the attendees into the experts and took the “guide on the side” role. This allowed us to do more learning from each other – rather than have me go through 6400 slides in 40 minutes. Since, I am the host of the Interactive Meeting Technology Blog – I would have let all of you readers down if my session didn’t have an interactive component.

[Read Lara McCulloch-Carter's post - Fishbowl session through the eyes of the virtual attendee for some discussion and feedback on my session]”

I liked the fishbowl so much, I immediately advocated its use the next week at UNTECH10 the unconference that rose out of the canceled ASAE Tech Conference. It was actually used for nearly every session at that conference. And, when I have my next local fishbowl I can only think about #EC10

On the Spot Interviews

An interesting thing that was done on site was the interviews of attendees. Often, Emilie Barta pulled some people aside to question them, “live at five” news style with a camera that would broadcast sessions to the online participants. Emilie “ninja ambushed” me, so I was fortunate to be one of those interviewed.

This was really instrumental in bringing the conference to the online participants’ computers, and making them really feel part of the education.

Webcast

As I hinted, most of the EventCamp content was captured and broadcast out to those who could not be in New York. I can’t believe how many people said via Twitter, “it’s almost like being there.”

How did the Eventcamp organizers do it?

They made certain to involve the online participants by assigning a moderator like Mike McCurry to the session. In a particular session I attended Mike carefully listened to the session and monitored the Event Camp hashtag #ec10 on Twitter. He interjected person’s question, and the speaker or fishbowl participant was able to respond immediately on camera with audio. The only thing the “virtual” participants missed was the handshaking and lunch.