GeekRetreat Stanford – My Personal Experience and Highlights
To summarize – GeekRetreat Stanford completely exceeded my expectations and the organizers ( Heather Ford, Justin Spratt and Eve Dmochowska) deserve special recognition for their vision and approach which achieved such a superb result from such a motley crew of delegates. To expand, read the the rest of this post…
So I left late on Friday and only managed to get to (the very awesome) Stanford Valley Lodge in time to make the end of the first session on Friday evening. I was immediately struck by the amount of stuff that had already been written down on the weekend planning wall and the quality of the discussion which was being being facilitated by Heather. The sessions were arranged into three kinds (I may not have the names exactly right): “Talking Heads” where we randomly where assigned to 3 of 10 possible groups facilitated by a volunteer to discuss a topic of their choosing; “Hot Spot” where 10 people each had 5 minutes to present (one way) an idea/topic/concept of their own choosing; and then finally longer slots (I think they were called “Skills Share”) where topical presentations were given in 1 hour slots. Apart from these more formal sessions, there were also plenty of informal times (including a fantastic visit to The Birkenhead Brewery) – and these are perhaps were the most valuable discussions took place – the discussions arising from the other more formal sessions.
