everal weeks ago, I attended a two-day conference dubbed Event Camp Twin Cities. The concept behind Event Camp was to create a learning lab of sorts, where conference attendees would be inspired to try new communication and collaboration paradigms.
“If things go well,” read the event’s website, “the experience will be more like a delicately woven tapestry and less like an all-you-can-eat buffet line.”
Unfortunately, what I experienced was neither a delicately woven tapestry, nor an all-you-can-eat buffet.
While Event Camp was supposed to demystify event-related technologies, the plan backfired, and the technologies we were supposed to master (or at least become familiar with) obstructed the very connectivity they were purported to enhance.
The Great Event Camp Challenge, for example, was a game that guided teams of live and virtual attendees through a series of five challenges and a dozen activities for which they would earn points and badges (think digital merit badges). But the well-intentioned networking activity proved overcomplicated and confusing.
Attendees who chose to participate were too busy collecting badges to network with anyone outside their team, and other attendees reported feeling overwhelmed as learning and networking took a back seat to the competition and its activities.
The problem with the challenge was not simply that it was too complicated and too time consuming for such a brief event. (Although it was like trying to cram an entire season of “The Apprentice” into the nooks and crannies of a two-day conference
agenda.) The activity, designed to
encourage interaction, actually impeded bona-fide networking and thoughtful discussion.
Subsequent failures came in the form of cumbersome interfaces intended to facilitate interaction with session presenters. Instead of making it easier to interact, the interface unnecessarily complicated things — and prompted people at my table to check their e-mail accounts in lieu of participating in the discussion.
A dozen or so iPads, also meant to provide attendees with tools to enhance interactivity, were scattered about the venue. But the ones atop tables surrounding me went entirely untouched. Ultimately, I wondered what the point of all those technologies was in the first place. Does every event-related techno toy fall into one of two categories: the unnecessary (like all those untouched iPads) or the overcomplicated (like the tools and activities meant to encourage interaction that actually impeded it)?
Following the event, I queried a few attendees who participated virtually to see how the experience differed for them. One attendee wrote, simply, “I think it was such a colossal failure that it set the concept of hybrid events back quite a bit.”
My biggest surprise at Event Camp came when I realized that the event had failed because organizers planned for it to fail. Partway through the first day, Samuel J. Smith, co-founder of Event Camp Twin Cities, introduced attendees to the Event Camp mantra: “If we’re not failing, we’re doing something wrong.” I applaud Event Camp for not being afraid of failure, but not being afraid of failure is different from aspiring to it.
Experimentation is important, and technology is a powerful tool — when wielded thoughtfully and strategically. But bear in mind that technology can also produce paradoxical outcomes: Social media can cause people to behave less socially, technology meant to facilitate can sometimes impede, and efforts to virtually extend an event’s reach can create distractions that make it more difficult to connect with live attendees in the front row. And contrary to Event Camp ideology, when it comes to trade shows and events, there are no merit badges for failure.e
everal weeks ago, I attended a two-day conference dubbed Event Camp Twin Cities. The concept behind Event Camp was to create a learning lab of sorts, where conference attendees would be inspired to try new communication and collaboration paradigms. 
