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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:
We bring people in. They have their breakfast. This was — actually that’s a lunch service, now that I look at it. We have donuts, coffee, bagels, cream cheese, whatever and for the first hald hour or so it’s basically people getting registered, coming in and starting to mingle. Starting to sit down at tables like this and chat. Then we give a short — and I do mean short. I have hammered this into Anthony that our opening session is short — no more than 15 minutes. We use that to basically welcome people, explain the 3 rules, explain how we start they conference. Now, you may notice in the back — see that white board in the back with the blue stripes on it? That’s how the schedule board looks when you arrive at a CareerCamp. It’s empty. We set aside a certain number of rooms and then in this same room that you just saw there, we have — we use tables for breakout sessions. We’ll just say that “That one’s A and that one’s B” or something like that for open breakout sessions. That’s what the board looks like and we have our times scheduled out. We have our room numbers that people can go to in a different wing of this building for the actual presentational things like this. And people re kind of thrown off by that and that is probably the hardest sell to people too. You don’t — “I — don’t — have — a — schedule? what? Er Ah.” “How do you do a conference without a schedule? And we explain to them, “You’re highly encouraged to participate in whatever way you find more comfortable.”
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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