Seth Godin has a post on his blog about building better hallways to build communities among "tribes" of individuals with common interests.
What would happen if trade shows devoted half a day to 'projects'? Put multi-disciplinary teams of ten people together and give them three hours to create something of value. The esprit de corps created by a bunch of strangers under time pressure in a public competition would last for decades. The community is worth more than the project.
He's absolutely right. Many trade shows include a social activity or competition (the iMedia Summits are great for this) that put small groups of attendees together for activities like sailing or skiing or mountain biking, affording everyone the opportunity to get to know each other better, and knit the community together with shared experiences.
Wouldn't it be infinitely more interesting and valuable to put those groups together to accomplish something useful and at the same time really learn what makes each individual so good at what they do? I spoke at a small conference in NY organized by Lennart Svenberg on mobile marketing that included just such an exercise. We divided into small groups for an hour and created innovative marketing campaigns for a fictional service, then presented them to the other attendees. It was an enjoyable and rewarding experience, and I learned more about my fellow group members than I would have from casual conversations over drinks or golf.
At an internal conference at Yahoo we spent an afternoon in small interdisciplinary groups coming up with the next great Yahoo property. A few were good enough to warrant further exploration, but everyone made new connections within the company that I'm sure contributed more to the company's success than did the projects we worked on that afternoon.
Wouldn't it be even more interesting to do the same thing, but have non-profits apply to supply the exercise and be able to use the results? I agree with Seth that the experience is more important than the outcome, but why waste the output?
Comments