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Batted around last week via email amongst my new TRU colleagues was the idea of perhaps hosting a Kamloops based WordCamp in early 2015. I definitely like the idea, but tossed in that I’d like to see something less conference-y.

For a music analogy, most conferences are like concerts. In some big room, the Big Name on the stage performs a feat of slide flipping, and the audience in neatly rowed chairs sit, applaud, take notes, tweet, and read email.

Then there are a series of smaller simultaneous mini performances in smaller venues. If you are lucky you may get to talk to the performers in the hallway (if they have not parachuted in) and often you will find other attendees with an interest in the same instrument as you. “Really, you play the E-flat whoozlehorn, too? How do you handle the tremolo on the flotzit?”

I’d like to see more do than listen. Something more un-conferency, where at registration, people would include specific things they want to learn or get help with, and as well, offer the areas they have some experience or expertise in.

In my first week here, I met colleagues like Colin Madland, who is working with WordPress and multisiting for Open Learning, and was at a faculty talk last week where the presenter was sharing a wordpress.com site she used for a Criminology Course. I suggested to Colin, maybe we start an informal weekly meetup where people could bring problems and solutions.

And we just jam on ideas.

The thing is, I think it needs some sort of structure, not overly structured, but when someone comes in to show a site that its less than a demo, or a “How do I make a WordPress Site more jazzy” but more like “I have this course site, but I’d like to be able to organize content by _______” or “How do a find a less bloggy them for a site that features student posts on _____” (not the best examples). Or “This is the way I used the WP-Groohuober plugin to create a threaded discussion in the …..”

Anyhow, this is just the start of outloud thinking.

But more like

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or

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than

creative commons licensed ( BY-NC-SA ) flickr photo shared by Duke Yearlook

Ideas? Rotten tomatoes/