I love discovering what goes on in my city. My Reader recently fed me a posting about the coming@party. The Art Institute of Portland invites people to go
[f]rom digital anonymity to personal interaction. We’ll go from digital chatter to personal conversations and maybe make some new connections in the process….
- Participants will write down their Twitter name on a card and one interesting fact about themselves.
- 15 minutes of silent interaction via internet only, using phones, laptops.
- After 15 minutes, people are encouraged to go talk in person with someone they connected with online.
At first, I had difficulty wrapping my mind around it: come to a live event to connect with others via Twitter, and then go talk to them face to face, which you could have done to begin with. Upside down. However, you can’t say it doesn’t make you think or trigger conversation or make a point.
It turns out, the coming@party is just one event in a 3-day series of events called The New Communicators, which was
“created to share experiences and inspire discussion about how we communicate with others using both online and offline media. It is for anyone interested in exploring new ways of creating conversations in our personal lives, within our communities or in business. It is a chance to share ideas, experiences and lessons learned.
This is not a traditional sort of conference. In fact, you might not even call it a conference at all. Anyone can attend and anyone can organize an event. Whether you are a individual, an existing organization who already holds regular events or a business, you can organize a New Communicators event. There is no formal submission or approval process. If you have an event idea, are willing to organize it and can find a venue to house it, you are welcome to post your event on the event schedule.”
In other words, a crowdsourced event series – crowdsourced conversations.
To make a larger, marketing-related point: this is a perfect example of empowering your target audiences – to create a product that fits their needs, to do what they want if they want it. You just provide a platform, an opportunity, the initial nudge. It’s also a great model for how to bring people together, how to facilitate conversation and interaction. It helps build (micro)community, and it generates social capital.
Without the platform, there is no New Communicators. Without the people organizing and attending events, there is no New Communicators. People make things happen. People satisfy their own needs through their own efforts.
Socially sustainable marketing at its best.
What do you think? Is there a future in this kind of activity, or in crowdsourcing in general? Have you seen or been to events like these in your community?
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Image credit: TwOsE
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