What’s in it for me?

The question every person should ask before attending any event.

Worth repeating   What’s in it for me?

First there was the conference.  People would go to a conference to hear speakers speak.  Hopefully the speakers who spoke were specified to speak about the specific things the people who sprung to hear them speak wanted to be spoken to about.

Ok I’ll stop that…

Conferences can also be entertaining, inspiring, or thought provoking.  Fine, but I generally go to conferences to learn.  Under the learning banner, many conferences have recently sprung up centered around “Social Media”.  I’ve been to them, been entertained by them (sometimes), inspired by them (sometimes), and garnered a few nuggets from them (sometimes) but did I learn?

Realistically, we hope the attendees paid for the right conference, that had the right speakers, that covered the right subject matter.  If they did, everyone leaves happy.  While that was mostly what happened, we’ve all been to conferences where it wasn’t.  Then again, how could it be?

Take a 100 people interested in social media.  On a scale of 1 to 10 describe your proficiency and knowledge with using Facebook.  How about Twitter?  YouTube?  LinkedIn?  RSS?  Video Editing?  The questions could go on and on…

You can see right away how the groups expertise will be spread out.  Some people might have expert knowledge about one topic and zero about another.  How do you cover everything to everyone?  What if they covered some of what you wanted but left out something and you had a question?  It just can’t be done.

Enter the REBarCamp movement…

It’s different.  The REBC says to the attendees, “What would you like to learn about and why are you here?”  The attendees then help to create the conference.  Actually, lets change that to conference(s) as most REBCs have a series of different sessions going on at the same time.  But who is going to be the speaker?  The REBC says, “If you want to speak you can speak” and taking it one step further, “but the speaker shouldn’t be the speaker, they should instead lead the discussion”.

That’s really revolutionary.  It doesn’t exist anywhere else.  It means that everyone attending has a chance to learn what they need to learn and if they have questions they have the opportunity to get an answer.  That means everyone walks away happy!

In purist terms, a REBarCamp experience should be the single biggest learning event you attend all year (assuming you attend only one).  Yes, there are exceptions to the rule and every REBC is different, but if you attend a REBC and think it wasn’t worth every minute of your time there’s only one person to blame.

So, if you feel like learning exactly what you wanted or needed to learn, you just need to ask yourself one question…

“What’s in it for me?”

Do so, and I’ll see you at the REBarCamp!

Side Notes:

• You can find upcoming REBC’s at the “mothership”  http://REBarCamp.com
• If there’s not one in your area – put one on yourself!  Ask me and I’ll be happy to help.
• I’m also happy helping your get a blog up and running with the REBC theme – just ask!

Mike Mueller

Mike builds the custom Apps that create the Tabs that make Custom Facebook Pages special. He also builds WordPress Blogs. He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike and a motorcycle (a really fast one), loves strong beer and good red wine.

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