The absolute worst presentation I have ever attended was… my own. Hands down. No question. Nobody will ever be able to argue this point with me.

A few years ago, when I was just starting in my first professional role, a friend offered me the opportunity to present on a topic that I knew little about at a NASPA drive-in conference hosted by her institution. I was excited by the topic from a distance, but had very little direct experience with it and should be have been transparent about that from the outset.

I decided to take the offer because I was looking for professional development opportunities. I am an ambitious person and I felt that with enough research and preparation I could essentially work my way through the presentation despite having never lived the experiences I was going to be presenting on. I relied on hastily read theory alone and this was a huge mistake.

A huge mistake.

The presentation was the professional development equivalent of stepping on a rake and getting hit in the nose by its wooden handle – only to turn around and have it happen in the other direction with another rake. After 20 minutes of talking, I ran out of material. I tried desperately to save the presentation by having the room split up into small groups and talk amongst themselves. People looked annoyed by my obvious tactic. At one point I even thought about faking illness. It was that bad.

At the end of the presentation, the bulk of my review sheets were marked with painfully low scores and comments that made me want to crawl under the podium and disappear with a party-sized bag of M&Ms. Two gracious people approached me afterwards and told me I did a great job with the tone of reassurance one would typically reserve for a kid who forgot all of his lines in the middle of a holiday play. I appreciated it.

I got in my car within five minutes of the presentation ending and decided to abandon the duration of the conference. I was hurt, I was disappointed, and I needed to sulk.

The good news (besides the fact that this session was not live-tweeted) is that I took some pearls of wisdom from the experience that I will never forget. Those are:

1) Avoid professional development opportunities when you are not prepared for them. This should seem fairly obvious, but it can be easy to forget. Some of us get so excited by the prospect of presenting (or writing articles, or whatever) that we put ourselves in situations like mine above and it is neither fair to the people who will be seeing our work nor ourselves. Challenging yourself to grow is an essential component in good professional development, but make sure it is done in ways that are realistic.

2) Make sure that you have enough material if you are going to write about or present on a topic – and then accumulate some more. In my opinion, having too much material to cover is better than having too little, because at least with too much you can prioritize what needs to be addressed while any excess can wait until future opportunities.

3) Practice, practice, practice! Not all professional development opportunities require you to perform, but many do. For those, you have an audience that wants to be both educated and amused, and you owe it to them (and to yourself) to give them a good presentation. If it’s a presentation, running through it before will give you an idea of what weak points need to be addressed beforehand. If it’s an article, don’t rush it. Take your time, get feedback, and revisit as much as possible.

4) Be selective when it comes to professional development. We are all working in a competitive economy and probably most of us perpetually feel like we need professional development to get ahead in the field. And we are right. But this experience taught me that quality professional development is better than embarrassing ourselves in front of our colleagues with sub-par work that does not make us proud. Student affairs is a small field, right? What we do matters.

“When all think alike, then no one is thinking.” – Walter Lippman.

I really enjoy attending conferences.  I hear some interesting talks and chat with some impressive professionals.  At the same time I recognize how outdated their structure and format are.  Apparently other professionals have been feeling the same way (Check out Erika Thompson‘s delicious Stack with links to most of the conversation).  I might be a little late to this party but I  I wanted to throw a thought into the ring.

The conversation’s I read centered around reconstructing conferences to make them more nimble, up-to-date, relevant, thought provoking, and so on – all valid points.  For this post I want to focus on conference content disruption.  Joe Ginese remarked that sessions are not so much about innovation, rather repurposed ideas that are offered as “possibly” applicable to your campus.  I agree with that but I see it going a step further.  The session content itself may not be traditionally innovative but what professionals do with the content is meant to be innovative.  The content we offer attendees become the tools for future program growth, but if we offer sessions lacking depth and richness, then the outcomes will mimic.

I was an Interdiscplinary Studies major as an undergraduate – which I am pretty sure is the technical term for an academic mashup.  One belief that was hammered home that I still believe deeply in:  Innovation sparks when multiple disciplines are brought together to see what can be created. HigherEd conferences probably can’t be considered a mashup of discplines. This is not to say that innovation and great ideas aren’t created at these meetings of the minds, but when you bring folks within the same profession together every year… the outcome isn’t going to shift much. There needs to be a spark that brings a little disruption to our conferences.

Let’s tentatively call it the National Professional Exchange. I picture the system looking like this:  A HigherEd professional organization makes a connection with another professional organization, one outside of higher education but that represents applicable professions.  These two organizations strike an accord that allows 5 or so professionals to attend the other associations conference at discount price.  Think of it as an investment in the group and their ability to come back with applicable fresh and innovative ideas for their peers. The professional would be enrolled as a NPE Fellow and tasked to engage with participants, present, and then bring back new ideas to the conference and discussed in an unconference setting.

This type of AltProDev is burgeoning as can be seen with the BIGIdeas conference in New Jersey. The conference organizers are having professionals in outside industries lead presentations and discussions.  Simply put, I LOVE that. You can also find live streaming conferences andor twitter backchannels that can give a similar experience.  All in all there are a number of ways professionals can find accessible professional development.  Would a National Professional Exchange be a viable option for AltProDev?

Do you think this system could work? Would it add to the conference experience?

Earlier this year, I was honored to be invited to attended the inaugural #140edu conference in NYC which brought together several hundred educators for two days to talk about the future of education. Modeled after TED, each person was given roughly 10 minutes to talk about his/her topic. My topic was on leveraging social media to increase student engagement outside the classroom. You can watch my keynote here.

After the first day of the conference it was clear that the focus of my talk was different than almost everyone else. While everyone was involved in education some how and had a desire to improve it, almost all the topics involved how to make “in-classroom” learning better, while my focus was on “out-of-classroom” learning. In higher ed this is often an area managed by a Student Affairs department.

I’ve attended dozens of education reform/revolution type conferences over the years, and I always end up feeling like the lone wolf talking about the “out-of-classroom” learning space. The informal learning moments that happen in-between classes.

Higher education analyst, Thomas G. Mortenson, revealed that a typical student will spend 15% of their day in class or working on classroom work and 35% of their day sleeping. That leaves 50% of the day for working or hanging around the campus community.

According to a UCLA national study of college seniors 4 out of 5 seniors say their most significant learning moments happened outside the classroom.

Academic researchers Astin, Tinto, and several others, conclude that the more socially involved a student is within the campus community, the higher his/her retention and graduation rates are.

With such strong data to support the work I’m doing, why do I always feel like an outsider at the education reform conferences where the conversation is dominated by in-classroom learning?

Three quick stories, one important point.

Story #1:
Last week, before my soccer match, I watched a little league softball game on the field next to us. Surrounding the field was a collection of parents multitasking between the game, their blackberries, and babysitting their, even younger, offspring. One parent in particular was having a hard time keeping her little one under control. Her kid kept racing up and down the sidelines while mimicking a train. He put his hand in the air, pumped his fist, and as he passed us let out a loud, “Choo Choo!” Then 30 seconds later he’d come steamrolling back. The kid clearly had extra energy and needed to let it out. The parent, and most parents would agree, didn’t try and stop him from running, instead she calming kept looking a few yards ahead to clear away any dangers that might be in his way. The little kid was motivated to run, so instead of trying to stop him, the parent took on the role of laying tracks for him to keep running.

Story #2:
My brother and I were playing Frisbee Golf and he lodged his frisbee square in the middle of a mud pit. I quickly looked around for a large stick and without much thinking took two steps into the mud pit, reached out my arm, and started to retrieve his frisbee for him. With my foot half covered in mud, my brother said, “never get in the way of a motivated individual.”

Story #3:
At this year’s ACPA conference in Philadelphia, the conference organizers hosted a special social media strategy session with several individuals to talk about how they could better leverage social media for the ACPA community. Throughout the session it was clear that someone needed to step up and lead the charge. Looking around the room, there were many capable individuals, but the question was who was the most motivated and ready? Kathy Petras raised her hand and agreed to lead the group. Since then,  she has been a wonderful leader, and had we had enough data to work with, probably could have predicted so because Kathy was already a trending leader in the community. She was a newer associate that recently took on a leadership position in another committee as well as led an ed session for the first time this year. If we were to tally up her actions, we would’ve seen she was a trending leader and was hunting for her next level of growth. In this case, leading the social media adoption committee was a perfect fit for her.

Point:
Every student group/classroom can be broken up into varying levels of engagement. Based on a specific student’s engagement level, they want to be treated in different ways. A fully involved students wants to be treated in a totally different way than a student lurking on the edge of the wall. A student’s engagement level is constantly shifting though, with a hope of always trending towards more involvement. It’s up to the leaders of the community to thus recognize the individual engagement level of each student, and also to recognize how an individual is trending. Find out who the Kathy is of your community that is trending towards being a leader, then lay down tracks for her to continue to be great, because the worst thing a leader can do is get in the way of a motivated train.

James Fowler’s keynote address at the #ACUI11 conference last week stirred up quite a discussion after he made the claim that online relationships had little influence over behavior. As expected, our friends in the #SAchat community quickly expressed concern for the statement through the Twitter backchannel and afterwards in the hotel lobby as they’ve experienced a great deal of influence exchange through #SAchat. In talking over the keynote with Jeff Lail from UNCG, he brought up the idea of weak ties verses strong ties within relationships. In-person connections are more likely to build strong ties whereas online connections are more likely to result in weak ties.

Over the past year, it’s been interesting to watch this concept play out within the micro world of Student Affairs. The #SAchat community on Twitter is arguably the most active hashtag for Student Affairs professionals to connect, learn, and grow from each other. However, within #SAchat there are many sub cultures such as Residence Life, Orientation Leaders, First Year Experience, etc. These subcultures have tried, several times, to create and maintain a hashtag to connect their members together. But most of the hashtags have faded away. Why?

Let’s start with #SAchat. The original group of people who started #SAchat knew each other in the real world. There were strong ties within the inner core. This meant that if no one else participated in the conversation, there would still be a longer term commitment to the conversation between the people in the inner core because they shared strong ties. As it happened, other people did join the conversation and over time it grew. If it were a dance floor, the total number of people on the dance floor increased through weak ties, but the number of people with strong ties in the center of the dance floor stayed the same. The critical shift in the community happened last year during conference season when #SAchat members hosted meetups at each conference. They wanted to meet their weak tie online friends IRL (in real life) and thus turn them into strong tie friends. The results were amazing, the #SAchat community grew exponentially. Back to the dance floor, not only did the overall number of people on the dance floor increase, but the number of people in the center of the dance floor increased as many of the weak ties were converted into strong ties. Each meetup repeats this process.

During conference season this year, I made it a point to connect with as many #SAchat people as possible IRL because not only did I want to get to know them better, but I also know how strong ties are what keep people engaged in the community longer.

On the flip side is #FYEchat. I started the #FYEchat community to mimic the success of the #SAchat community. But it has never quite worked even though I see the value it could provide to First Year Experience professionals. The difference is I started the community on a foundation of weak ties so the commitment to keep the conversation going wasn’t there. So it fades in and out.

Another example is the #WLsalt community started by Teri Bump. Her community started online with a collection of weak ties but has since grown to a dedicated group. The critical difference between #WLsalt and #FYEchat was that soon after a collection of weak ties were created online, Teri hosted a meetup for the community at a conference to convert those weak ties into strong ties. The strong ties thus formed the inner core of their dance floor.

In terms of weak ties and strong ties, there are two options to creating and maintaing an online community. Either start with an inner core built on strong ties that are dedicated, or convert your weak ties into strong ties quickly. Once the inner core is established, and the community norm of inclusion is practiced, you’ll watch your community grow with little effort from you. Weak ties won’t have as much influence over you as strong ties whether online or offline.