snowgoose

This has been a totally crazy week so far – I’ve not gotten home even remotely near the light side of sunset once and my days are rushing past in a blur. Of course that means that I haven’t gotten a chance to write about The GeekRetreat yet. This I am viewing as a good thing, most of the people who were at the retreat at Stanford Valley near Hermanus last weekend have written about it at length. Some of the posts are factual, some are a bit odd. One resonated deeply with me and made me re-evaluate everything I thought I felt about a person, it made me see the heart underneath the ‘arch-cynic’ (his words). It’s this post in particular, and the heated debate it has sparked, that I’ve decided to write my GeekRetreat post on.

This event is very special to me – I attended the first one in June 2009 by fluke. I didn’t think I was meant to be there and vowed to stay quiet and say very little (a feat we all know to be impossible) just in case I couldn’t contribute anything meaningful. I quickly figured out that like Heather Ford says “Everyone who is here is meant to be here”. I made some amazing friendships at that retreat and discovered a deep-seated passion within myself for educating people and helping them to become successful. And I didn’t stay quiet.

So when the next one rolled around, I was filled with a mixture of excitement and dread. Yes, dread… that it would never live up to geekretreat1.0. That all the stories I told could not be relived and this would be just another conference. I’m sure you figured out by now that it can’t be like any other conference, bosberaad, lekgotla or whatever you want to call them. I’m not exaggerating when I say the GeekRetreat is pretty damn frikken magical.

That is because the GeekRetreat by it’s very nature cannot fail. We don’t set out objectives or agendas beforehand and every person there brings something different to the mix. So, if we get there and the collective mind decides this is nothing but a drinking weekend, then we succeed at making it one giant party. But it doesn’t become just another piss-up* because there are no expectations or rules apart from “No Tourists”, i.e. everyone must participate. This means that we actually want to make a difference – nobody is asking us to be there or making it part of our damn KPI’s – each and every one of us sacrificed something to be there and we set out to make it worthwhile for us.

So this is why it hurts me to see some of the negative comments from people who didn’t try to or want to understand the purpose of this weekend. So for you guys (most of whom I like and respect), let me set the record straight in plain English:

1. The Retreat is not “Elite” or Exclusive” – everyone was given a chance to apply to attend and all the previous retreaters were asked to nominate people who they thought should be there. The funny thing is, if the so called “circle jerking” theory held true, then the same bunch of people you see at every tweetup and 27Dinner would be there. Only 10 out of 50 people were second-timers. So after the open application and nomination process, a bunch of 50 people were chosen who a) fit the theme and b) are likely to contribute and share.

2. These people are not all geeks in the traditional “we all own macs, have more than 800 twitter followers and work in eMarketing/Social Media/Tech” sense. Since the theme this time round was Education, there were some amazing human beings from the Educational sector there. Yes, fo’ real. People who don’t have iPhones and Kindles, people who will really benefit from events like this and are now willing and able to take what they have learned into the place where it matters most; the classroom.

3. Of course not everyone who should’ve been there was – we know this. Every one of us there could have thought of 5 more people who should’ve come. It’s not actually possible to include every single person all of the time. And once you get beyond a certain size, you lose focus. I have to give huge kudos to Heather, Eve & Justin. I have no cooking clue how but they somehow managed to get a bunch of people together and not one of them was negative, lazy or free-loading. Having worked in corporate South Africa and gone to more conferences and team building things than I can count – I am totally flabbergasted.

4. There will be other retreats. And new groups of people who go. So if you really want to participate and you think you can add value, for chrissakes, apply. Seriously, it will change your life. Just ask Jarred.

I’m not trying to preach, I want every person out there to become as excited by this wonderful event that shows that our industry may just be starting signs of growing out of it’s baby clothes as I am. I know it is hard to support something you haven’t experienced, but by the same token, we should never knock something we don’t fully understand. After attending 2, I still don’t fully understand how and why the geekretreat works, but it does. It makes people happy and it incubates ideas that may just start to make a difference.

And that’s just fine by me.

* yes, there was drinking, but it never got in the way of the thinking.

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Tags: Education, Eve D, Friendships, Geek Retreat, Geeks, Heather Ford, Justin Spratt