Almost no one has talked about the success of last week’s Soulard Idea Market. Matt Homann did a great job putting on the event- the venue was excellent and it was a great “trial run” for what I anticipate to be a larger and more regularly scheduled event in the St. Louis area in the future. There were lots of interesting folks that I would have never had a chance to meet outside of the event, however I established several second and third degree connections with colleagues from Microsoft and other professional associations.

I agreed to share my observations with Matt about what worked and what didn’t via e-mail, but I’d rather throw them out here on the blog and see what sticks. Here are some things that worked well:

1. Idea “speed dating”- Matt took the “speed dating” concept and applied to idea exchange and conversations. We had a number of three minute exchanges of ideas in groups of two and three that were interesting. It is a good exercise to sit down with someone you’ve never met and exchange ideas on a topic, “pitch them” on something you’re passionate about or ask them a hard question.
2. Venue- The Lucas Schoohouse was the venue and it was perfect for the size group we had. The facility would scale quite nicely as the event gets a bit larger.
3. Open space- We did some ad hoc breakout discussions in the spirt of Open Space. While there is more to the Open Space concept than what we explored, those discussions were interesting.

Here are some things that didn’t work so well and may need to change for the next event:

1. An Unreasonable Request- The unreasonable request concept was brought up by Matt at a lunch meeting back in the Spring, and he incorporated it into last week’s event. The problem was that there was no structure around it and very few people actually seemed to engage. I would have liked to see the unreasonable request portion of the event be structured followed by some unstructured time for people to have a dialogue about the requests.
2. More structured introductions- I didn’t get the chance to meet everyone and see what they were about. We had a web site set up to do some pre-event networking but the uptake was limited. Whether virtually or in person, we should have some more structured introductions prior to the next event.

Given the success of this event, I’m surprised I haven’t heard more feedback from other attendees. I’m hoping that I hear a bit more this week. Matt- it is time for you to tell us about your thoughts coming out of the event and your suggestions for the next one. I think that many of us are looking forward to it.