On BrainJams and Catalysts

Chris Heuer is one of those “painfully unhireable” types (though he’s employed, haha) - I know because I am too. Filled with a bundle of ideas and the willingness to pursue them, often we find ourselves looking for new outlets and methods to get in touch with the world. Very much like me, Chris is quite seduced by the nature of face-to-face interactions while valuing the power of online communities.

It should come as no surprise that he’s the driving force behind the BrainJams series of events. What is a BrainJam?:

Think of BrainJams as the "unconference" for everyone who is passionate about ideas and making a difference; it is a space for collaboration and new ideas; where smart people don't talk at you, they talk with you. BrainJams is truly of, by, and for the people--the organizers provide the space, some basic structure for the day and an environment that enables participants to create the conference, with the conversations that matter most.

BrainJams bring together people from different backgrounds to share knowledge, experience, and ideas across traditional boundaries. According to Jack Welch, this sort of “boundaryless behavior” was the key to his success at General Electric. By bringing together technologists, media people, non-profits, business leaders, civil servants, and artists, amazing things can happen.

Source: BrainJams D.C. Event

There’s one coming up this Monday in DC. I’ll be attending for sure and hope to see as many of you there as possible. We need to give those Left Coast folks a run for their money!

An interesting side note to this is the catalyst notion. I’ve found that often, looking back at where we’ve come from is critical to getting where we need to. This is especially true with idea generation where leveraging every morsel you’ve spawned previously helps fuel the machine. Chris recounts my involvement in getting BrainJams going (it’s loose and I had no idea, but it’s nice to see the threads):

I just got off the phone with Greg Narain who is working on his new startup called SyncPeople. You may have heard of him from his Beercasting days. We can directly trace the lineage of BrainJams back to him - because if it was not for his random phone call one day last spring from my registration for a beercasting event in Florida, I never would have went to Gnomedex, which means I never would have met Will Pate, which means I probably never would have gone to BarCamp - where I met the people who inspired me to take action myself. Which in the end, is what I am really trying to get across to people - that anyone can take action using the amazing and free, easy to use Web tools that are available to bring people together and make a difference.

Source: Chris’ Insytes, ” BrainJams DC: A slow but steady start”

Go figure ;)