Posts Tagged ‘melanie bechard’

We’re coming up on the third Case Study Jam in a week. I’ve been involved in these events since Joe Boughner brought the idea to me and a few other people (Della, Nick, Melanie, and Joe’s wife / co-conspirator Amy), and now that we’ve had a couple under our belt, we’re hitting that gawky adolescent phase, I think.

Case Study Jam is a simple concept. The site describes it like this:

Case Study Jam is a place for communications practitioners to come together and share their stories – successes and failures. How are on-the-ground, front-line folks using social media and, more importantly, how are they integrating these tools into overall communications strategies and practices? Oh, it’s also an online repository of these stories. But more on that later.

The idea for this meetup was to set ourselves apart from events like Third Tuesday, Social Media Breakfast, Ignite, and professional development events organized by IABC, CPRS, Canadian Women in Communications, etc. After all, why do the same thing as something else?

The difference? One, the world-cafeish format. Another, the focus on presentations about failure as well success. And third, a focus on case studies, as opposed to theory and principle.

The first two jams have been successful on a number of counts, I think. People have met there, ideas been exchanged, some interesting presentations made.In fact, there’s talk that the model may start up in a second city soon.

Cheryl Gain of Ottawa Tonite emotes at CSJ1

We’ve also found a number of things that we’re tweaking as we go along. For example, we’re giving presenters more structure to follow in their presentations, and we’ll be pushing for more table hopping and shifting in the upcoming jam to encourage discussion.

But one thing we’ve noted is a certain topping out on attendance.

A week out from Case Study Jam 3 (or should I go with the Super Bowl Roman-Numeral Scheme and make it Case Study Jam III?) and we’ve got about 15 people registered. The room holds quite a few more, and we’d quite naturally like to see a full room. And my competitive spirit looks at more mature events like Third Tuesday or Social Media Breakfast and their full rooms and goes waaahhhh!

A bigger crowd would be great. But So there are a number of things that come to mind as to why we’re not filling our rooms yet.

• We’re new, they’re not.
• We don’t have super giant name speakers
• There’s not an infrastructure behind any one of the organizers pushing attendance from colleagues/clients. It’s organic in the extreme.

I suspect that we may be a little impatient. Or you may think we’re missing something. If so, tell us. Or if you want to make me feel better, why not come by next Thursday? I highly recommend the Lindenhof Apple Fritters for dessert and the conversation for a main course.

Case Study Jam 3 will feature Constable Nathan Hoedemann (right) of the Ottawa Police Service, Theresa Woolridge and Jennifer Jager of Emergency Preparedness Canada, and Dan Blouin of National Defence as they talk about the successes and failures they’ve experienced in their projects, and as always, you get to pick their brains afterward.

See you there?