Where will you be on 7th May?

I’ll be thinking about the future. Not necessarily political futures, I doubt the dust will have settled by Friday 7th, but the future of work with young people and the impact of digital technologies whilst chairing the Connected Generation 2010 Conference.

This will be the third Connected Generation event (well, the first was called UK Youth Online, but we changed the name to avoid confusion with UK Youth), but this time we’re doing things slightly differently – holding it on a week day to enable new participants to come along through their work – and including some speakers and workshops to spark discussions before we go into an afternoon of open space sessions.

I’ve mentioned the event already on this blog just a few posts back, but as it gets closer we’re keen to make sure everyone who wants to come along is signed up before we finalize plans for the day. So, if you’re thinking of coming, but you’ve not registered yet, get your booking in before the end of the week (16th April) and you can use the discount code ‘TIMSBLOG’ to get £10 off the already very-good-value price.

More details and booking here…

Connected Generation 2010: The Conference

Lots of people have been starting to ask me when the next ‘Connected Generation’ event will be taking place. Well, thanks to the sterling work of Katie Bacon, we’ve just booked The Watershed in Bristol for 7th May 2010 to host Connected Generation 2010 – a one-day conference exploring youth engagement and technology in 2010. Based on feedback from participants at recent training events, and on the positive response to the Beyond Twitter event we ran up in Wrexham last year, we’re trying a mixed Conference and Open Space format again – with a morning of top-quality input from speakers and a range of pre-planned workshops, followed with an afternoon of curated unConference, where delegates can set the agenda and direct the conversations.

Bristol Watershed - the Venue

I’m delighted that key speakers at the event will include a gender balanced panel with:

We’re still in the process of confirming the workshop programme, but plans include:

  • Ethics and ICT – workshop with Andy Phippen from Plymouth University;
  • Promoting Positive Activities with Social Media with Steven Flower from Plings;
  • Safe and Sound Foundations – proactive approaches to safe social media engagement with young people, staff and volunteers;

If there is a workshop you would particularly like to see, drop in a comment and I’ll see what we can do…

Full details and online booking available here. (If you can’t order online because your organisation needs invoicing etc. just drop me a line…)

Fingers crossed, we’ll also be using the event to launch a new ‘Youth Engagement and Social Media’ resource which Katie and I are hard at work drafting, and, if you want, you can pre-order a copy when booking your place at the conference.