Safari Reflections

So… a couple of weeks has passed since I returned from the Social Age Safari in Bristol. The last three posts have some details about the three day event and if you want to see more you can look at the website and the twitter feed at #socialagesafari.

I thought I would wait a little before posting reflections on the event.  In this post I will give a short description of the third day, followed by my own reflections on the event, divided into what worked, what didn’t work and what I learnt. This will be a slightly longer post than usual.

The third day of the Social Age Safari began early again at 8.0 and had a seamless agenda running through to the close which was scheduled for 16.00.

Like the previous days, there were no breaks in the agenda. Something was scheduled for every moment of the day. It was up to us as delegates to decide what to dip into and out of. Being excited and curious about the whole process I was probably a little over-enthusiastic and dipped into too many things, which meant that my input dipped on the third day as I went into a more passive mode.

We had a couple of really useful talks from Julian Stodd to frame the learning that we were absorbing, we did a further hack, and there were creative sessions too. These were hugely inspiring and consisted of a session on a magazine launched by the Sea Salt team called =Q@l (pronounced equal) it has brilliant ideas behind it. Limited to 100 copies, full of provocative articles aimed at generating debate and argument.

The other creative session featured a music charity called Drake Music and a musician called Kris Halpin. The charity works with the tech community to create free or very cheap solutions to technical problems that enable disabled musicians to play music. Kris demonstrated a fantastic technique using motion sensitive gloves and a MacBook. The technology was developed for Imogen Heap and is being used by Kris to enable him to make music. It was a brilliant session.

The day ended really skilfully with a well thought through leaving ceremony. This included making a note of the key things we were going to take away and who we were going to link with. This message was copied with carbon paper (remember carbon paper from the days of typewriters?) and then one copy was to take away and the other we put into a bottle and closed the lid. These bottles were then all dropped into a barrel as we shook hands with and hugged crew members as we passed off the “ship” and left the event.

It was beautifully choreographed.

Then on the train back I slowly wound down and absorbed what I had experienced.

There was lots of talk about technology throughout the event. But I can’t help thinking that it is the connections between people through whatever medium that really matters. Whilst I love using apps and tech, social is more about the conversation. About curiosity and a passion to find out about others. To weave together the tapestry of stories so that they make sense in my own little space in the world. And to process three days of learning and connecting until they make sense and I can integrate some of the key ideas into what I do, how I do it and who I do it with.

The following week, I began to curate a Storify of the tweets that took place during the event. I thought it would be useful to gather them all into one place and dip back into the whole event through so many different perspectives. This proved more difficult than I thought it would as there were so many tweets. Storify has a limit of 1000 tweets – I got to 1500 and hadn’t captured them all. So many ideas, so much capture, so much sharing and so much energy.

The learning for me is still slowly sinking in. Often it is said, that when we experience any sort of training event, the initial learning at the end of the event is really high and that it tails off as we get back into the familiarity of our lives.

In this case, it felt as though the learning continued after the event finished. I kept up tweeting and connecting with people who I had met. Reading blog posts and emails too, the whole process continued to social learning that had begun in Bristol. This looks like a set of techniques that make learning much more “sticky” and dynamic.

Julian introduced the event on the Wednesday evening saying that it was highly experimental and that he expected only 50% of what we did to work, and 50% to fail.

Reflecting with a couple of weeks having passed, I suspect the success rate was higher than 50% and like all good experimental processes, where there was failure it was a great learning experience.

For example, on the second day and into the third day, the relentless agenda was causing many people to lose the ability to think clearly. I suspect there was just too much to take in. It would be helpful to build in passive, reflective time into the agenda. This would particularly help the more introverted participants who would have found the structure overwhelming at times.

The visual elements of the event, together with the overall rehearsed structure worked really well. This helped to set a prevailing culture for us to work within. I felt very connected into the wider community from the outset. The use of wrist bands and passports helped to build a strong sense of community. The newspaper that was created and went live during the event helped to build shared ownership of process. The use of hackathon methods helped us to connect and work together, although at times I think the groups foundered with the topics they were given and the feedback process didn’t really work, as these things often don’t!

The whole event has left a real mark on me. It felt like one of the most significant learning opportunities I have experienced and will be something that I will talk about for years to come. I was inspired with new ideas, new people to connect with, and new projects to start.

Also published on Medium.