Learning 2.0 conference Shanghai

This past week a committee of International Technology Educators launched our Learning 2.0 conference that will take place next September. If you head over to the conference blog you can watch and listen too the kick off presentation that was given to vendors, companies, and educators. I had a chance to talk to some of the vendors that are excited about the conference and they are looking to introducing some new products to the Asia region at the conference as well. Over all the kickoff was successful, and the list of presenters we have lined up is impressive as well.

Parts of this conference have been in planning for almost two years. The three major international schools here in Shanghai are working together to bring this conference into reality. Shanghai is such a dynamic system, ever changing, ever evolving…what a great place to have a Learning 2.0 conference.

As we started planning the conference we kept coming back to the world dynamic. We wanted to quit talking Web 2.0 and put it into action. That’s what we are trying to do with this conference. There is no keynote as we felt we wanted to introduce people to the new conversational aspect of learning. Along with pre-planned conference sessions we are also embedding an unconference style  conference as well. Not sure how it will work but what we envision is having conference that allows for participants to be able to ask questions and suggest sessions while in the pre-planned workshops. Those questions and session topics will get put on a web site where they can be dug (think digg here). Once a topic/question gets X amount of digs it is assigned an area/room where that conversation can take place. These conversations could last an hour or more depending on the people attending and what pre-planned conference sessions they wanted to attend. Dynamic? We think so.

We’re also incorporating and exposing participants to as many tools as possible. The conference of course has a tag (learn2cn) we also have a conference twitter account, and each participant when registered for the conference will automatically be given a social-network ID and made a member of the conference ning site (Still under construction). Here participants can start having conversations before the conference if they choose, or presenters can use the site to show the power/potential of social-networks. Doing a session on blogging? All the participants will already have a blog thanks to ning.

I’m not gonna spill all the beans here, but we’ve got a couple other tricks up our sleeves as well. If there is something you think a dynamic conference should have…let us know.

Want to be a sponsor of the conference? Drop us a line.
Want to follow the action? We’ve left our Social-Network sit open to all. So if you want to join in or just follow the conversation of the conference please do so.

We’re looking at 350-500 people for our first conference. We were worried when we set that target back in February that we might not get 350 participants. But more requests keep pouring in from schools outside of Shanghai which is great.

As far as we know this is the first educational technology conference of its kind in the Asia region…and hopefully not the last.

[tags]learn2cn[/tags]

Technorati Tags: learn2cn