Community Makes the Difference at DevLearn09

I’m still decompressing from DevLearn09. As expected, the eLearning Guild put on an outstanding event. I knew it would be too much to take in, and it was. It was hard to decide which sessions to attend, so I missed several I wanted to see because of scheduling conflicts.

The Twitter activity was also overwhelming. In every session I attended there were people tweeting about it. It’s hard to pay attention and tweet at the same time, but we want to share the small nuggets of learning. Even though I missed sessions, I got real-time reports (positive and negative) on the sessions I missed.

This was good and bad. The downside was a couple of sessions I attended didn’t meet my expectations, so seeing tweets about how fabulous others were made me a little jealous.  The good thing was that I benefited from others sharing the highlights of sessions I missed. I wish there was a way to see all the presentations I missed.

Twitter also became the de facto method of networking. Almost everyone I met included their Twitter name as part of the introductions. Mark Chrisman (@badsquare) put his Twitter name on his name badge, great idea. Michelle Lentz (@writetechnology) put it best:

My favorite recurring line this wk: “oh! I follow you on twitter!” Instant friendships. #dl09

And it really was instant friendship. We were all there for a common purpose and had similar interests, so we already had a lot to talk about. Twitter accelerated the conversation because if you just met someone you follow or who follows you, then you already knew a lot about the person.  It felt like a reunion and conversation flowed easily and freely. The networking and relationships made DevLearn even more enriching and rewarding than it already was.

The technology helps us for connections, the events help us grow relationships. This makes the community stronger. It encourages us to share and be involved, even if it’s only 140 characters at a time. The sense of community, and wanting to give back to the community, was palpable. I’ve been to other conferences, but none of them have the sense of community that DevLearn has. Twitter is just one tool that helps us connect, but it really is the people that make all the difference.

Here are some of the people I connected with, they are all great people and worth following. Thanks to B.J. Schone for the idea.

• @badsquare
• @briandusablon
• @bjschone
• @bschlenker
• @cammybean
• @dontlookhere
• @jclarey
• @jenebean
• @jim_bayliss
• @laurakratochvil
• @mike_rustici
• @pipwerks
• @stevewenrich
• @visualrinse
• @writetechnology

I’ve got a lot more to say about DevLearn09, but the most important part of the conference was the people and community we are a part of, so I wanted to get this out first.