Learning is messy.
Johnnie Moore wrote about this sketch: “I think it captures very succinctly the perils of retrospective coherence – the myriad ways we tidy up history to make things seem more linear.” And: “I think learning needs to be messier; amid all those twists and turns are the discoveries and surprises that satisfy the participant and help new things stick.”
Great points, Johnnie, and I’d like to add one more. Models of success and learning like the one on the left lead to tidy, simplistic conference models (with those deadening learning objectives). When we embrace the reality of messy and/or risky learning, embodied by the sketch on the right, we become open to event designs that mirror this reality and provide the flexibility and openness to address it.
I’ve been designing and facilitating participant-driven and participation rich conferences for over thirty years. It’s true that carefully prepared broadcast-style sessions can provide important learning from lectures by experts to a less-well informed audience. But, in my experience, most of the deepest learning that occurs at events is unexpected. It’s a product of the serendipity that interactions and connections create. And the event’s design facilitates (or restricts) the level of serendipity that is possible.
That’s why fundamental learning is messy.
Sketch attribution: Babs Rangaiah of Unilever (“& learning” added by me)