Hidden Rewards of Learning with AIIP
Addressing AIIP Virtual Events and Collective Impact
by Liz McLean
After a year as a Virtual Events volunteer for AIIP, I’d love to share with you some of the most remarkable realizations that have come from our informal Info Pro Cafés. Never been to an Info Pro Café? If you love to learn, want to connect with fellow infopreneurs, listen to the sound of other people’s voices in your field, and do some “local” networking via Zoom, then mark your calendars and jump in with both feet at the next event.
Here are a few more reasons to love the learning format:
More than just a topic
AIIP’s Info Pro Cafés are informal, organic, and free flowing conversations around a given topic and the wins/lessons from the infopreneur’s perspective. Our topics are selected from membership-requested subjects on professional development, personal development, building our businesses, and tackling new tools to help us run our businesses effectively.
Members benefit from conversational events like this as they engage in a collegial and community building environment. Among AIIP peers, members find concepts or ways of doing things, as they grow professionally and see their business challenges with fresh eyes.
Our conversations uncover so much more than the initial topics as they are framed. This happens because the power of discussion among trusted and respected AIIP peers is a great multiplier of sparked conversations and curiosity. The real magic of these discussions takes us beyond prompts as our members bring a wealth of wisdom, perspectives, and collaborative engagement.
My own personal ah-hah since volunteering with the Virtual Events Committee is also more than I expected. Aside from “meeting” new members on Zoom and re-connecting with other AIIP’ers, I’ve learned to show up with energy and engagement even though there is a good deal of uncertainty about how things will go. I’m a creature of structures and frameworks, and Info Pro Café conversations are not intended to be highly structured. The real collaborative benefit for everyone is realized by embracing uncertainty in either the topic or how the discussions unfold. Appreciative questions lead to more good questions, learning, and insights. I know that AIIP’ers are savvy enough to clarify and frame solid questions that result in seeing knowledge gaps and pairing them with worthwhile next steps and resources. I’ve learned that it’s ok to be unsure of what we’ll end up with when the time runs out. The real collective value-multiplier is that we communicate with one another and grow our social learning and community connection exchanges.
And yes, we’re still learning.
Check out our calendar of upcoming events, and – if you’re an AIIP member – you can catch up on past topics of interest through our recorded sessions.
To pitch a topic, host a conversation or volunteer with our committee, email us at Virtual-Events@aiip.org.
Liz McLean, Principal of Knowsaic, creates frameworks that connect people and organizations to the know-how they need to do the work they need to do better.
