This week, I had the opportunity to learn about Ed camps firsthand by participating in a small scale one in class. It was a great experience and doing one like this showed me how small-scale ones can be easily facilitated. The concept of a more fluid structure is exciting, as is the idea of choosing topics based on the interests of who is actually in the room at the time. I found this approach a lot more reflective of reality, considering there’s no easy way to accurately predict what a room full of people will be most interested in. Allowing participants to guide an event like this is an ambitious approach, but I found it worked surprisingly well.

In a more formal setting, it would certainty be useful to have topic experts involved in discussions, but a format where group members are supposed to contribute more than just listen or participate feels authentic. I found that I was comfortable engaging in the conversation even when I did not feel like an expert on the subject.

I was also surprised by how much the format facilitated in depth discussions that went in several directions. For example, my group was discussing aliens and the focus of the discussion ranged from science and math, to philosophy and literature.

I have had the experience before of signing up for a workshop, or activity that was not what I had anticipated and feeling stuck there. The freedom to move around without being a significant disruption was a great feature and I can see how it would create a more dynamic environment for a large-scale conference. However, I did not actually take advantage of this feature, nor did anyone in my group, which surprised me, but was reflective of how engaging the conversation was.