Learning is not a solo activity. While we all have different experiences and arrive in the moment individually, we learn through interaction. Interaction with others, with ideas, with new perspectives. Often this happens unintentionally, through our day to day living, working, listening, reading. Other times it happens intentionally. We take a course, we seek out videoes, articles, books on certain topics.
It can also happen when we decide to attend a lecture, a workshop, or a conference. Conferences are intentional gatherings of people around carefully curated topics. Sometimes they are super fancy at ritzy hotels or venues and you leave with a goody bag of marketing material for stuff you never were interested in. And sometimes, they are online, intentionally inclusive, with topics that will make you think differently and see perspectives you didn’t know existed.
This week the South West International Development Network (SWIDN) is holding their annual conference online. It’s aimed at practitioners, thinkers, people engaged in work with global communities who are trying to figure out how to work better together. It is a conference to help us shift from ‘us vs them’ to simply ‘us’. Practically. Not theoretically.
And it’s a conference for the organisations with £500 budgets and £5 billion budgets becuase it’s for people. It’s for you. But no, you won’t leave with a goody bag of ritzy stuff that you’ll throw in the bin. However, you will leave with a new perspective, a new idea to implement, and perhaps a new friend or whole network of friends.
It starts today. Now (October 11, 2022). And runs for three days. Check out the details here. Oh and it’s FREE. Sign up. Attend a session. Or all sessions. Contribute, engage, learn.
What’s stopping you?
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