What I like about Trampoline is that it is based on the idea that you “come along and share what you find amazing”. Unlike TED where you actually have to be the person doing the amazing things, at Trampoline you just have to be able to tell the story :)

The day starts at the grid – the empty schedule on the wall is filled as people put their hand up to give a talk on a particular topic. Not everybody is expected to talk, but most people will probably have a topic in mind that they could quite easily lead a discussion around. When the grid is filled the morning starts and everyone disperses to one of the five concurrent sessions that will be running. It is quite fluid because of the idea that you vote with your feet – if you don’t find a particular session relevant you are expected to get up and move to another session.

How can you attend Trampoline?

Trampoline 2 booked out in 4 hours – so physically, you can’t attend this one (unless perhaps somebody mimics the emergent BIL event and organises one around Trampoline?) Keep an eye out for the next Trampoline, they run twice annually.

That leaves us with the virtual. There will be a very loud #trampoline backchannel due to the sheer number of Twitter natives that will be in the room, so that will be a good place to start. People will be sharing their highlights from the talks that are in progress, their photos, their videos, and more. If you follow the links that appear in the stream you should have a continual flow of interesting things to watch.

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I think the key to The Hive’s success has been the simple proposition. We have a date (second Tuesday of each month) and a venue (some bar in central Melbourne) and a speaker (a friend of a friend) that we send to a list of people who are interested (just under 2000 members).

Our message is “The Hive is networking for entrepreneurs.”

Interesting shares a similar approach, and it must have been good because people took the idea and ran it in Sydney as well as New York and Amsterdam.

Their message is “Come and share what you find interesting” (see How to be interesting).

Russell says “These things go so much easier if all you do is the main thing you want to do. We book a hall, organise some speakers and tell people about it. There are no badges, schwag, things in bags, pens with logos printed on them, no sponsors. There is barely any refreshment. You don’t need that junk around the edges.”

Russell speaks more about how the event works in the last three minutes of his Do Lecture. 

You’ve gotta be interesting first and convincing second.

If you try to be convincing first everyone will tune you out.

and

“If you want to build a better mousetrap you have got to leave room for the mouse.”

Once you set the ‘rules’ of your event it is important to step back and make sure you leave a few gaps for others to fill because those gaps are where it gets interesting.

Related posts:

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