Event Camp Europe To Bring Innovative Techniques to New Audience

Posted by: Jenise Fryatt

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

The event that was born from the Twitter community #eventprofs will cross the pond September 9 with Event Camp Europe, #ECEU11, a daylong conference for European event professionals interested in learning more about hybrid events and innovative meeting formats.

Like the first EventCamp, which took place in New York City in February of 2010, ECEU is being organized by a  group of friends who met on #eventprofs. This international group: Ruud Janssen of Basel, Switzerland; Lindsey Rosenthal of Washington D.C.; myself, Jenise Fryatt of La Quinta, California; Paul Cook of Surrey, United Kingdom; and Elling Hamso, of Stavenger, Norway have been working together for months using online collaboration tools.

I recently asked my co-collaborator in this project, Ruud Janssen, to answer a few questions for Engage365.

Ruud is a long-time event industry professional.  His company The New Objective Collective works with associations and membership based organizations to captivate, cultivate and elevate their communities using new media and online collaboration.

Ruud has been particularly interested in user adoption of technology and organizes open source events like TEDxYouth@Basel and TEDxBasel.  He also  delivers  training for meetings and events for a number of universities in the Netherlands and Switzerland as well as MPI Global Training

JENISE: What is Event Camp Europe and how did the idea for it start?

RUUD: Event Camp Europe was an idea that resulted out of the wonderful #eventprofs crowd on Twitter and their enthusiasm and exciting POD event we organised from Basel, Switzerland during Event Camp Twin Cities 2010. The idea further sprouted out of a terrific lunch with Lindsey Rosenthal and yourself Jenise where we discovered we would all be in London on the 9th of September this year and thus the words were put into action to make this happen.

JENISE: What is your objective for Event Camp Europe?

RUUD: Fast Media and Slowfood. Work together using the newest media and then enjoy some excellent quality slowfood. We want to apply the learning and further experiment with formats and combining hybrid event techniques and technologies to test the boundaries of these exciting new formats of co-created open source events. It goes without saying that co-located with Event ROI Week and a 2 day social media and hybrid events course on Tuesday and Wednesday, Event Camp Europe will allow us to apply the learning coming out of these  days together with those that have participated at previous Event Camps in the past 18 months.

JENISE: Does the state of the event industry in Europe differ in any significant ways from that of the U.S. (are new formats, tech & marketing strategies being embraced at the same rate as in the U.S.?)

RUUD: I think it does. Culture, language and boundaries are more significant than you might think although the will and enthusiasm is none smaller. I do think that this makes it very interesting to take learning away from this new event for Europe.

JENISE: Will Event Camp Europe share or collaborate with any of the other Event Camps?

RUUD: Most certainly. Based on last years terrific experience with Event Camp Twin Cities organizers Sam Smith and Ray Hansen are discussing with us ways in which we can extend and span the 2 weeks between ECTC11 and ECEU11. We have some exciting ideas lined up and are looking forward to how this will materialize.

JENISE: What do you hope that attendees both onsite and remote will take away from Event Camp Europe?

RUUD: An enthusiasm to experiment and challenge the conventions of the meetings being held today in Europe and across the world. A desire to collaborate online and offline and a country house experience in an idyllic part of the UK that will inspire and put the immersive experience of an event camp in a context where slowfood is very important as well as some very high quality conversations amongst participants. The result? Lasting bonds between people and a place that fosters trust so that participants feel more comfortable experimenting with hybrid event formats.