Kind of like… if something is on fire, is it flammable, or inflammable?

This weekend G and I hosted a new event.  Every year, the district has offered employees the opportunity to purchase computer equipment at educational pricing,  with an optional payroll-deduction scheme. It’s a popular event, and always a good opportunity to see familiar faces and do a little shopping.  This year, we decided to take advantage of having Apple professionals with us and combined the purchase event with a learning event.  We offered 6 different free workshops, each 90 minutes long, on a variety of topics, all related to frequently used apps and devices. It was a great idea, and really quite successful from a high-level view, but there were some …. extra learning opportunities that I hadn’t expected.

First, a True/False Quiz:

#1.  If you build it they will come

#2. Twelve emails may not be enough

#3. Do you get what you pay for?

#4. It is a failure if it’s not what you envisioned?

#5. Are there free things we should be suspicious of?

Answers:

#1. You would think True on this–after all, Kevin Costner did the thing. I’d give this one a Partial T.  People were interested, signed up, and emailed to ask questions. Some of those same people even showed up and attended. But… it would have been great to have an actual crowd take advantage of the talent we had gathered together.

#2. True. I posted a photo on Facebook from the event and got a message asking what was going on there. From someone who would have received all of our communications, but not in the right venue, not in the right format. It was a reminder to me of the power of social media.

#3. False. The sessions offered were all the sorts of things that would feature at a conference costing $100-$300, and would be highlights of the event. Yet, when offered for free, they don’t seem to have the same draw. Are we getting jaded in our consumerism? Is everything that seems “good” too good to be true?

#4. Hard False. Sure, I would have loved to have had 100 people leave at the end of a productive and engaging day, brimming with ideas and charged with creativity. Instead, I got to spend a day immersed in exactly what I wanted to do, talking with a few other people about exactly what I wanted to. And I have ideas for forward direction. I can’t call that a failure on any score.

#5. V  True. One of the discussions that wouldn’t have happened in a frenetic and jam-packed session was one around Privacy.  In this case, our data.  As companies like Google and Microsoft try to move into our space, offering Free cloud storage, Free apps, Free data management, I get real queasy. At my free event, I wanted people to come at get something to take away, not leave me things that I could use for marketing, corporate leveraging and data mining.

So the lesson for me is to find out what people want, and offer it in a way that engages them, in a format that they see as valuable. I wonder if I could get Kevin Costner to do a guest appearance?