Thanks for dropping by and adding your comments. I think we’re seeing the rise of informal and social learning and in many cases presenters need to expect that there are content experts in their audiences as well. Learning how to tap that audience expertise and engage them with others is a win for all. I agree that in some cases like medical education and some scientific arenas this model does not work as well.

Perhaps conference organizers and presenters should adopt a new mantra: None of us is as smart as all of us.

Also, I have taught classes for a university where the “teaching” model is exactly as your propose. Again, for topics where participants have some experience to draw from, it works out quite well. However, when the participants have little to no experience, it can be problematic.

I will often work with my general session speakers to help them make their presentations more interactive. When I have the space, I’ll put the audience in rounds of 12 and intentionally select people at each table to help facilitate discussions. Then the presenter will share for about 15 minutes followed by each table discussing the presentation. When WiFi is available, and we’ve set up the technology as well, after that 15 minutes we’ll have a note taker from each table text or tweet their high point to a specific hashtag. The presenter can quickly debrief top takeaways from each table and then proceed to the next point of his or her presentation.

It takes intentionality on the part of the presenter and conference organizer to create these hybrid presentations as I’m calling them. When you trust the learning process and implement education design correctly, everyone walks away with the presenters main points applied to their own situations and with adequate discussion.

hmmm do you have an example of the hybrid presentation you describe? has it been done? who’s doing it? how can i do it? what hasn’t been done yet that we should try? – jl

Yes, you’re right that I’m not advocating the demise of ballroom presentations. I would like to see more hybrid presentations where the presenter spends 10-15 minutes sharing insights into a subject and then attendees spend 15 minutes talking about it with each other, then repeating the process several times. I’d like to see the audience interacting with that content as well as engaging with each other. Of course there will always be times when the one to many makes sense and is the right thing to do.

@Jeff – Thanks for including the link to my post in this discussion.

In watching this slideshow I couldn’t help but run to my copy of “understanding media” by Marshall McLuhan, where he says:

“… when the instant speed of information movement begins… there is a collapse of delegated authority. The separation of functions and the division of stages, spaces, and tasks are characteristic of literate and visual society and of the Western world. These divisions tend to dissolve through the action of the instant and organic interrelations of electricity.” (Page 247)

Also wanted to add, the “educational format” of one teacher speaking to many underling students is severely ingrained in the mind after 12 years of compulsory education. Another book, “The 12 Year Sentence,” explains the evolution of compulsory public education in the United States and how it was essentially based on factory models. So overcoming that social inertia will be a big job.

Full disclosure here, being a speaker, I would hate to see the “speaker speaking to the multitude” format disappear! But what I learned in the music business was, the best speakers/seminar leader/conductor achieved the goal that I think you are hoping to come to, which is using their position of power to actually minimize their input and maximize the output of the entire group. I have seen people do this, but, sadly, they are certainly the exception, not the rule… there is always the desire to return to the familiar, and everyone is familiar with being a passive obedience student in a classroom.

In my opinion, the seminar leader/speaker format by itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing when the person at the podium has a goal of maintaining the status quo, of maintaining the existing power structure and their place in that hierarchy. But as I learned from great conductors, the more power you delegate and give up, the more power you get.

Yep, I believe there’s hierarchy, anarchy and heterarchy. I think conference organizers can create facilitated and structured event situations that involve models of networked, collaborative learning with heterarchies. Unfortunately, that takes more effort than the traditional top-down, controlled one to many presentations. It also requires new thinking on the part of the presenter and conference organizer. It’s noisy and feels different than the traditional presentations.

@Laurent – Thanks for sharing the link to Lee’s presentation. There’s some interesting information in it.

@Steffanantonas – I like your post about Netflix’s Culture of Freedom and Responsibility. It resonates with me and extends this conversation into the corporate workforce as well. Thanks for sharing it. http://blog.steffanantonas.com/netflixs-freedom-and-responsibility-culture.htm

“How can we change our education efforts within meetings and events to embrace a network-based collaborative conference?”

This could start in two ways:

Offline dialogue, face-to-face, among those in the “one” position.
Online anarchy from those in the “many” position (I heart anarchy).