In the 2010 Camp, the organizers hired third-party evaluaters to interview campers in order for us to understand the nuance of participants’ feelings, opinions and all kinds of interaction during the five-day activities.
The results of the interview and qualitative evaluation were very encouraging. The following is the summary from the evaluation report. You may read about
2012 Report Testimony directly.
Summary
The camp was a success, according participants’ opinions. It’s not just the seamless proceeding of the sessions, but also the available knowledge, ideas and network for future work they took home with, plus the transformation and friendship that they had experienced. Because participants’ background are related to communication technology and technologically enabled solutions, they responded more strongly towards the sessions and facilitation that carried the following qualities: urgent and important measure (eg. security and fund-raising), simple and appropriate technologies (e.g. geo-chat and low-power radio), and direct relevance to their line of work.
Five days was a long time away from work and home but the momentum of learning, engaging and transforming was well kept because of the variety of session topics and activities, new friendship, inspired minds and projection of more possibilities for the immediate future. Participants showed high and all-around appreciation to camp organizers and facilitators. Dimitri, Sunil, Pete and Michael were the most mentioned among all. Their facilitations were regarded as highly important, immediately useful, practical, fun, hand-on and ready to deploy. Their personalties, rich knowledge and sound presentation skills were repeated in various interviews.
The diversity of participants’ background have kept the camp in check, meaning that the camp was not only meant for the technology-savvy or pro-ICT minds, but also those who do not share mainstream opinions. Individuals’ discontent and opinions are listed and interpreted in the follow section under the title “The Discontent – what they said and what we heard.” Those opinions create a possible space for alternative curriculum and ways of organizing for future ones.
The provided sessions bred new things in two directions. One is the post-camp insights and questions and the other ideas for new actions. This author considers these questions self-explanatory thus list them in the separate sections without any further interpretation.
This author, as an outsider and an observant, must applaud the camp organizers for your streamlined and decisive leadership, unobtrusive but effective coordination and implementation. In addition, you’d placed the various elements into the camp to foster the dynamics fitting for the topic ICT and the relative younger generation. In sum, to borrow the words from one participant, we both wondered how your next camp in 2012 is going to exceed this one. We will be looking forward to that.
2010 Camp Evaluation Report (Full version; 216KB)
