Suddenly I find myself at Friday of an intense week.  I wrote about one of the intense events in my companion blog The Uncoordinated Coordinator. Three days later I find myself doing another Ignite session (no longer terrifying, downgraded to mildly stressful), a short time after having done a presentation that I was very hesitant about.  Hesitant in the sense of while I was excited about my topic, I was unsure about how it would be received. After all, I was appealing to the audience that I was gently teasing in my topic.  Sometimes people don’t like to be teased.  Also, I wasn’t planning to speak the entire time– in fact, I had only prepped about 20 minutes for a 90 minute session. I also didn’t plan an activity for the flex time.  I was relying on my content to provoke conversation that would fill the bulk of the unstructured time.  I had no way of knowing how many people would attend, and which segment of the conference attendees would be interested, and if they would interact with one another. My topic was about the culture of a Technology Department, and in particular how to mesh the needs of the educators with the realities of the technicians’ abilities and resources. My audience was split almost exactly in half between Educators and Techs, and they all seemed to appreciate my opening slides– a good sign. When I came to the end of my talking points and said the next bit of time would be devoted to sharing conversation and reflection, 6 or 7 people got up and scuttled out the door — a bad sign. But there were a few things at play- I believed in what I was attempting to model– less stand and deliver, less learner passivity, more engagement, more reflection. All of that meant I had to take a chance.

Breathe and believe in the process.  The audience divided themselves into loose groupings, and began to share.  As I circulated and listened in to the conversation, I noticed the depth and the breadth of the discussion–underscoring my notion that letting the participants talk and share was going to be a valuable component. I needed to resist the urge to fill the silence.  As the time stretched and the conversations continued, I knew I had hit the perfect combination.  In short order, I realized that I only had time to bring the whole group back together and summarize what I had heard in the small groups.  Heads nodded, knowing glances were exchanged, and I finished the session by sharing that been a little nervous about the structure (or lack of structure)  of my session, and how gratified I was that they had all participated and shared the experience with me in an authentic way.  I also thanked them for not being offended by the title of my session– And again I was gratified by their response: “Oh no!” one passionate participant said, “Nerds are cool!”

And that’s the story of the inaugural presentation of my workshop, titled: “How to feed and care for your Nerdlings”