Come to a salon

Join me in a social experiment online with a group of peers.

As you may know, I'm writing a book on informal learning.

While writing about the importance of learning as co-creation rather than learning on one's own, I realized I wasn't taking my own advice. That was the genesis of the Internet Time Salons.

The salons are conversations, not presentations. At the appointed time, half a dozen to a dozen of us enter our online living room. The first 15 minutes, we get acquainted. For the remaining 45 minutes, we share stories. I hop in as facilitator when we hit a bump in the road, but I don't purport to be an expert. Conversation flows freely. Everyone said they enjoyed our first three salons. I record the sessions and send out a summary afterward.

A little ahead of time, enter our online living room (http://tinyurl.com/7n7g5). Register as a guest, using first and last name. Once in the room, tell us briefly who you are in the text box.

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Wednesday, August 31 | 1:00 pm Pacific | Coaches & mentors

Wednesday, August 31 | 4:00 pm Pacific | Off-site & Outward Bound

Friday, September 2 | 9:00 am Pacific | How do YOU learn?

Friday, Septmeber 2 | 1:00 pm Pacfiic | Implementation Horror Stories

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Culture Note

For me, the word salon means Paris in the 1920s.

Saturday evenings, Gertrude Stein hosted soirées in her apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus, not far from the Luxemburg Gardens. (Uta and I have made a pilgrimage but got no closer to Gertrude's than peering through an iron gate at the courtyard.) Pablo Picasso might drop by. Or Henri Matisse. Or Ernest Hemingway, Man Ray, Mortimer Adler, Paul Bowles, William Carlos Williams, Cecil Beaton, Sherwood Anderson, or Guillaumé Apollinaire.



Conversation was the primary activity at Gertrude's, and what conversations they must have been! Can you imagine having a chat with F. Scott Fitzgerald or Henri Matisse? (Alice, more brownies.) Since I have neither a collection of original Picassos nor a Paris apartment to lure people to my salons, my events would have to take place on line. (Bring your own brownies.)

Half a dozen friends attended our first online salon. Our catalyst topic was Emotional Intelligence. We used a conference call for audio, and Breeze for text chat and graphics. The folllowing week another group talked about Learning amid Information Glut. The conversations yielded all manner of things I hadn't considered. Also, people seemed to be having a good time. The following week looked into Social Network Analysis.