My conceptual mind is a tinkering away today. The analogy is not yet right, but the question is firm and good:Will the "Community" surpass the "Event" as the thing? So that events are simply bubbles on the surface of things?
I was re-reading an article this by @samueljsmith in the e-book Social Media for Events by @ready2spark and two specific points leaped off the page at me:
"Attendees will expect to connect with other delegates before, during, and after the event." & "New Events will emerge from online communities."
I am a strong believer in both of these statements (as well as the other 8 great points Samuel makes in the article) and have for a while been articulating the change in the event atmosphere and the understanding of event design and event education. But today a new thought happened! Forever, I have thought about events as "the event" - it is that which we prepare for, which attendees get excited about. The Event has always been the thing. And communities occurred as a result of the event; that is to say that people would meet at a conference or event and then stay in touch as new contacts in a Rolodex-version-of-community. But with a changing understanding of how adult learning occurs, more and more focus has been placed on conversation before, during and after the event. The explosive growth of Social Media continues to demonstrate that the power of the community to shape dialogue and make change is vast.
So what if the Community is really the thing, and not the event? What happens if we re-envision events as momentarily emergences from the conversations within a community that occur over the course of time. What if we consider first the community and its dialogues as the primary experience and like the warming lava inside lamp, at given periods of time portions of the population become excited and bubble up into gatherings on a certain topic, around a specific discussion, or for a special need of the community. As the accomplish their task, they fall back into the community and the conversation continues.
Perhaps a lava-lamp is not the best visual image here, but it gets at the point. Or maybe it is more like that plasma light I used to love to play with as a kid - lots of particles (=people) flying around inside a defined space (=community) in and amongst low pressure gases which makes them excited and visibly functional (=brand, organization, conversation, interest) and act on the sphere by touching your finger to the outside (=action of putting on an event) you cause some of those electrons to get hyper excited and come together to form potent streams of lights.


