This past weekend I attended BlogHer ‘08, an annual conference that attracts (primarily female) bloggers from all spheres of interest. I expected to get a lot of value out of the workshops and panel discussions, and I did, but I also got a bonus benefit: sparks of inspiration fostered by the collaborative atmosphere.
A fellow attendee and I were killing time between sessions when we started bouncing around ideas for a fledgling Web enterprise we’d been discussing for months. It’s been one of those “We should really do this” things, where we haven’t gotten anything off the ground; it’s been good cocktail chatter and not much else. But being steeped in the creative juices of a thousand fellow bloggers managed to get the ball rolling in a way just random chatter couldn’t. By the end of the lunch break, we had a tentative business plan, a page full of notes, huge enthusiasm for the project and even a new domain name.
It got me thinking that there’s more to collaboration than putting two (or more) people together and hoping for the best. The environment in which collaboration occurs is critical. While my friend and I are both bright and ambitious, we weren’t able to harness all our creativity and ideas until we were lifted along by the currents of entrepreneurial energy at this conference.
So the next time you’re trying to get a collaborative project going, consider where your idea-making happens — and if the well seems to be running dry, consider a change of venue. Whether it’s attending a conference or just moving a meeting to a coffee shop, a different scene might make all the difference.
