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A clip from this longer presentation – CareerCamp: New Unconference Methods for Helping People Build the Career They Deserve with Douglas E. Welch
CareerCamp Founder, Douglas E. Welch, shares CareerCamp with the attendees of the California Placement Association at their annual 2015 conference in San Luis Obispo.
He discusses What is CareerCamp?, how it might be used in your organization and takes you through an example of a Day at CareerCamp.
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Transcript:
CareerCamp, as Anthony was saying, is 5 years old. In those 5 years we’ve done 10 CareerCamps in the Southern California area. CareerCampSCV (Santa Clarita Valley) is Anthony’s puppy and that is the longest running CareerCamp with five. Mainly because of the exceptional support we get at the college and the facilities we have available to us. The other CareerCamps have actually ended because we have lost our venue and are currently searching for other venues for those. Ah, maybe this will intrigue some of you folks to bring CareerCamp to your venue, to your college, to your organization, wherever. The fact is, CareerCamp works anywhere. We’ve been very successful doing it at College of the Canyons, for a variety of reasons, but the concepts of an unconference — and I am going to go into exactly what an unconference is in a little bit — work in any size group at any venue. I often am very fond of saying that an unconference can happen in the middle of an open field, if that’s all you got. it’s much more important that the conference happens than that it happens in a perfect way. And really, all you need to make an unconference happen are a group of people who are interested in sharing what they know with others.
What is CareerCamp and Career Camp International?
CareerCamp is a community organized, career-focused, unconference which calls upon local communities and people to share their knowledge, expertise and other important information on developing yourself and your career.
What is an unconference?
Unconferences are self-organizing conferences, similar to many professional conferences, but instead of hiring well-known, professional speakers, they call on the attendees themselves to provide the content and focus for the event. Every person who attends is highly encouraged to present on some topic deeply important to them or, barring that, to facilitate an open breakout session or round table discussion or even just to engage and converse with their fellow attendees between presentations. A few organizers band together to find a venue for the event, recruit sponsors and invite attendees, but the focus of the unconference is driven solely by the attendees.
Some might question the usefulness of presentations by their peers, but we have found that there is an enormous amount of real-world expertise available in each and every local community. CareerCamp utilizes a format that draws out that expertise and benefits everyone. CareerCamp (and other unconferences) provide a structure and an opportunity to share this expertise in ways that traditional conferences do not. Additionally, CareerCamps also attract career development professionals who can use CareerCamp as a way of introducing themselves to a new audience of potential clients.
How was CareerCamp developed?
The genesis of CareerCamp was found by attending BarCamp unconferences held around the world. CareerCamp founder, Douglas E. Welch, was a long time attendee of BarCamp, which is an event that embraces any topic, although it often leans toward technology. After seeing the success of BarCamp as a way to illuminate and educate within a community, Welch applied the unconference concept to the specific world of Career Development.
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