I attended the (rather grandly titled) ELSPA International Games Summit yesterday, with Stephen Heppell, who was there talking about links between the learning and games communities in the UK.

There were a few interesting sessions, but also some mind bogglingly turgid and boring ones (the speakers shall remain anonymous).

At times I was reminded of the worst of my undergraduate lectures, and felt that we would have been better off if everyone had just gone to the pub for a chat!

The idea of these days is presumably to share information, but often the presentations were too long, going into too much detail, when what was really needed was a brief overview and a discussion.

There’s got to be a better way!

I’d love to see events like these organised differently, so that we got short (15 min) presentations to provide key facts, talking points and perhaps a bit of provocation from an expert.

Each presentation could then be followed by a moderated discussion (the panel events yesterday were the best ones) in which the audience ask questions or make suggestions, depending on the topic under discussion.

What would be really nice would be if these Q&As were actually recorded and minuted, then written up by someone during the day, and presented later as a summary and/or the start of a further discussion.

That way it really would start feeling like the best kind of brainstorming sessions in the pub, but with the added advantage that someone was actually writing down all those great ideas, and you’d also get the minutes and summaries to take away at the end of it, instead of your own scrappy notes!