Speed learning – Members’ workshop

An evening of Speed Learning and Sharing – not to be confused with speed dating!

This is a club evening intended to be a bit of fun, social activity with a learning ‘bent’ to it based on sharing information on 6 mainstream photographic topics. What you need to do is bring some kit along (see below).

Outline plan of the evening

On the basis of a typical attendance of circa 30 – 35 members, the plan is to have 6 tables of circa 5-6 members per table, including an experienced ‘facilitator’ who will remain at the table. Each table will have circa 15 minutes to chat and swop notes about a specific photographic subject matter which will be allocated in advance to that facilitator and table.

At the end of the period members move to another table to discuss a different photographic subject for a further 15 minutes, eventually getting around all tables. To make it sociable, it’s not the intention for members to rotate to each table as a group. Each member is free to move to any table, but each table will be restricted to 5 or 6 members.

At the end of the discussion period (circa 90 minutes), each facilitator will briefly summarise his/her findings of the discussions (6 x 5 mins = 30 minutes).

In order to make the discussions as practical as possible, members are encouraged to bring any photographic equipment they would like relevant to the 6 photographic topics to share their experiences, likes and dislikes.

This ‘speed sharing’ experience also allows members to contact each other outside club nights if they want to use, borrow, buy, give, share kit or spend time helping in extending that person’s photographic knowledge.

There will be a big piece of paper on each table where members can jot down their thoughts.

The topic tables and facilitators

Table 1 – Jill – Tripods and Monopods.
Table 2 – Liz G – Books, magazines, tutorials and social media.
Table 3 – Shaun – Hard drives, screens, and processing software
Table 4 – Mike C – Lenses.
Table 5 – David W – Printers, printing firms, print paper, mounts, mount cutters.
Table 6 – Martyn – Cameras.

The facilitators will prepare some very broad headings and questions to focus the discussions including (where relevant) bringing along material/equipment relevant to their subject. E.g. for the printing table, what printers members have, cost, what paper they like for which subject and costs, where to buy inks, cartridges, likes dislikes. This could also include commercial printers like DSColour labs, Zippy Pix etc and maybe have a few price lists printed off to compare companies etc.

15 minutes is not very long to cover each topic but that’s part of the intention to ‘focus’ (excuse the pun) everyone’s thoughts. It may be that we re-run the event again the following club season in a revised format based the experience of this new (potentially regular) event in the club calendar.

With a big thanks to Jill & Liz for the excellent idea and we’ll try and post any meaningful findings in Vignettes. Any questions, send Mike or I an email.