July 22, 2006

Professional Development the Unconference Way

This past week I helped lead my co-workers in a retreat focused on emerging technology. I make it a point to try and stay on top of developments in the field with the help of 250+ RSS feeds. But for those whose jobs aren't primarily focused on technology, it made sense to use a retreat like this to ensure that we all have a common understanding of the top issues of the day, especially as they relate to our current and future work.

I really wanted to avoid a Karl-driven event, so I took a few pages from the unconference playbook. Devotees of this concept will no doubt notice that we skipped a few key features, like the self-organizing nature of the outline, but I think we still managed to capture the spirit.

To start with, I put together a list of about a dozen trends, with a very brief description of the trend, some introductory resources, and some probing questions. I let each participant (there were seven of us) pick a topic. Then, I gave them very minimal directions: they had an hour to address the topic in a computer lab. They could do anything, including lecture, discussion, or activity. The presentations didn't need to directly address our work, but they could (for those that didn't, we did post-session wrap-ups to capture relevant thoughts). Based on the topics chosen, I put together an introduction where I tried to raise a series of themes that I thought wove through the two days.

I was really pleased with the outcome. No two presentations ended up alike. We had a couple that were more lecture-style, but even those featured group activities. Others were discussion-heavy, and some relied on group activities. None of this was planned; it just organically happened, and it worked brilliantly.

And, by having the participants lead sessions, it ensured that everyone walked away with deep knowledge in at least one area.

I encourage you to give this style of professional development a try sometime. It worked quite nicely with this small group, and I imagine that the unconference idea would work nicely with larger groups, too.