At our last Google Firestarters we gave away a nice screenprint from our good friends at Scriberia to celebrate our tenth event. It's quite humbling for me to see it all laid out like that, and think about the range of subjects we've covered, the amazing speakers, and all the support we've had from the wider planning community who've attended, joined the debate, and contributed towards making it such a successful series of events. I've put together a page aggregating all the event write-ups here. Since March 2011 Firestarters has benefitted from considerable momentum, and most pleasing of all I think (and as Phil once very kindly said) there has been a real sense of community built up around the events.
That community aspect has always been very important both to our Google hosts and to me, and we've often sourced event themes from some of the attendees. Those event themes have always focused on the real challenges and opportunities facing our industry right now, and have facilitated and stimulated some great debate. We've also worked hard to vary the format of each session and have ranged from structuring an event around a single speaker to having eight rapid-fire provocations. So as we go into 2014, and start thinking about our third year of Firestarters events, we'd like to ask for your input into how we could deliver even more value from what we're doing.
We have a few ambitions. There are some people that I'd really love to have speak but somehow it hasn't yet worked out so hopefully we'll be able to sort that. And we've been toying with the idea of taking Firestarters on tour and looking at different locations, or even going international and doing/linking in with events in NYC, Australia, Asia perhaps. And maybe filming the events (although I do kind of like the idea that it all happens in that room at that one point in time).
But as always we'd really value your input and feedback. In particular I'd like to know what your experience of Firestarters is. Have the events proved valuable for you? Beyond that, we'd also like to know if there any subjects you think we should tackle that we haven't done yet, or if there is anything you think we should do more or less of. You can leave comments in the post or else contact me directly – any feedback is greatly appreciated.
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