I was so relieved when the mini conference I facilitated was over. There were no major technical glitches, it went smoothly. I am very much indebted to ‘THE’ Facilitator of this course Ms. Sarah Stewart for being so supportive. I was in the verge of giving up the course because It seems that I am overwhelmed with the information that I have to imbibe…I was drowning with information…but our wonderful facilitator pulled me from the flood of information and showed me not only to swim but she thought me how to surf…Isn’t that cool…I was able to surf in the wave of techno world….To you Sarah, my Heartfelt gratitude , hats off to you.
The secret of the success of the conference is highly attributed to the presenter/Speaker, Ms. Bronwyn Hegarty who is indeed an epitome of an educator. With her expertise Bronwyn shared her knowledge unselfishly. A self-made as she is, yet she unpretentiously work with a rooky like me in this mini conference…To Bronwyn…my respect and admiration to you.
The beginning...I was thinking of presenting and facilitating at the same time. My plan was to talk about Retrospect : Self Analysis. I thought of this dual role as I am New to this country and I haven’t met or known of a speaker/presenter yet. The dual role idea for the Mini Conference was turned down. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as she introduced me to Bronwyn who is working with Reflective Learning. Our main communication in organizing the mini conference is through email apart from call and text messages.
Blogging and emailing through the egroup was used as a tool for promotion. My worry was ‘’what if minimal participants are member of the egroup’’. I tried looking for participants email contacts in Wiki but only found SL. So I decided to look at the email attachment of some participants, I noticed some email address of the invites so I copied them as well, assuming that they are participants that are not member of the egroup. But that was my big mistake because those are personal invites of one of the participant. Again my apology...Any way I already sent my letter of explanation as she demanded. Never the less with these invites and updates the participants are properly guided on where and when the conference is.
I was coining an idea on how to welcome the attendees in the conference room [elluminate]. My original plan was to let everybody introduce themselves but I did not push through with it. (As when Bronwyn was uploading her presentation there were heaps of slides I thought she will use all of them). I wrote a welcome note in the whiteboard, I thought that this would make the participants welcome. I also put up technical advice to check audio. And the Mini Conference sailed smoothly...Alleluia...
Most people tell me “Don’’t be too hard on yourself”. So you will be a judge on how I faired as facilitator here is the link of the recording Reflections. Also here is a link on Bronwyns three step Reflective template...
To all the Participants....Cudos.....Thank you very much
Thank you very much for your description of what happened at your mini event. What I would like to know more about is the session itself - what you felt went well; what you would do differently next time and what you learned from the event?
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