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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.
![A Day at CareerCamp - Part 7 - Allow Time for Conversation [Video Clip]](http://careercamp.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/careercamp-23-conversation-anim.gif)
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Transcript:
So at nine o’clock or 9:30 I think we do is actually what 9:30 9:45 whatever the board said there. We fiddle with the times over the years but we start the first session and people look at the board, they decide I’m going to go to room D and listen to a talk on this and way to go and one of things we build in in each session is 45 minutes with a 15 minute break and that 15 minute break I have found very, very important. I’ve been at other unconference where it is smaller. There is so much that happens in that little 15 minutes. it is amazing. First of all, people need a chance come back to the board and see what they want to do for the next session. Then there’s simply logistics of I need to see what’s next. Because you don’t have a printed schedule like we do today, to say “Oh, these four things are going on. I’ll go to that one.” You have already pre-decided. You have to go back to the board and say “What’s in the section?” things may have moved. Things might have been added after someone realized, “Oh, I actually want to do this now, too.” So you needed that time to go back. S0 you always try to have a lobby area, kind of in this case, it’s a big room where we meet for breakfast and lunch and that initial meeting. At the church, it was simply the main part of the church kind of the sunday school building and then we have 3 rooms off of that that we could use for a meeting rooms. The lobby is very important and that 15 minutes is very important, I think, between sessions. it really does facilitate conversation and an interchange.
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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