Great or Challenging?
A little late to the post Great Ideas discussion, sorry. So ya, was out in Miami last week, and co-presented in two sessions (one on wikis and one debating the death of membership). On the whole, I massively enjoyed the trip and got a lot of value from being there. So, Great Ideas was totally ROI positive.
That said, I found the content to be insufficiently challenging. Not that the content was of poor quality. It was good content, say on par with Annual. But, I guess I was expecting every session to be really out there in terms of level of innovation or controversy of ideas (like my debate on the death of membership). In short, I was expecting way more heretical content than solid status quo content.
There were a few gems... The Dan Roam visual problem solving keynote was great. The '80s music leadership session was way out there. The volunteering unsession was a cool experiment. And a small few others...
Different definition/expectation of "great", I guess.
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Comments
I must say I was pretty shocked at some of the "old school" content at this conference. One session I went to was awful beyond recognition - no one had any idea what the speaker was talking about at any point during the whole thing. And apart from the volunteerism unsession, I was surprised at the lack of any "creative thinking" stuff (outside the sessions) like we had last year (the lady who drew pictures of all the content during a session, the interactive games, etc). Other sessions should have been awesome (eg the one on the Obama campaign) but had surprisingly few people in them. The content in general skewed heavily towards uncreative (though I will say both keynote speakers were fantastic, even though I don't particularly like Patti Digh's ability to crack open my hard shell of cynicism - ha). I thought Great Ideas was a conference to stretch our thinking, experiment with different formats, and generally help us come up with great ideas??
Posted by: Maddie Grant | March 3, 2009 5:32 PM
I came away from Great Ideas wowed - by the unsession, conversations in the hallway, the new approach on teaching leadership (through music) ... but agree that if I had to rate the entire meeting it wouldn't be as high as last year. Couple of us were talking and suggested that the solution is crowdsourcing the content and the presenters. And let's add to that a requirement that presenters do a sample video clip with their submission. It would be fun!
Posted by: Peggy Hoffman | March 4, 2009 10:51 AM
You guys are a tough audience! :O)
Although I have to admit that I too, thought that Great Ideas meant every session should, well, present a great idea--not necessarily a NEW idea, but at least something that goes well beyond what's probably your current operational practices, strategic mindset, etc. But it's important to also note that the planners & speakers are to some extent limited by audience expectations & needs as well--some of them need mostly traditional programming; at one time I thought that this conference (which was held for a number of years several months apart in two discrete locations) was meant to the 'replacement' for M&T after it was discontinued, but instead the mix of Tech, Symposia, and CenterU online programs have grown nicely to cater to what is in terms of interests a fairly fragmented marketplace for education.
Because a lot of the content is fairly traditional (at least based on what I've seen in the past) or the more innovative sessions represent "pretty-good-but-not-great-ideas," the 'out there' programs help spice up the mix but also ensure that more traditional-minded folks also go home happy. Someday we may all come looking for the most radical experience possible, but for now the audience & content seem to be an evolution, not a revolution...
Posted by: Kevin Whorton | March 5, 2009 6:06 AM