I have been to dozens of conferences, including every GEO meeting since 1998. GEO is great because of the people, some of my favorite people in the field seem to attend. Still, and this is no knock on GEO, it is the sad state of conferences these days that, just as in the 1970′s, and probably back to the Pleistocene, they alternate between plenary sessions and panels, and “interactive” means a 10 minute Q&A at the end. We can do better.

Next time let’s do GEO as a three day Open Space session. We could invite people to consider some big topic in philanthropy, to just come at noon the first day and make it happen. There will be no conference planning committee. There will be no proposals for workshops. There will be no agenda. There will be no celebrity plenary speaker at lunch. There will be no break out rooms. We just need one room large enough to hold all of us with lots of space to move around. We need a bank of laptops we can all use to capture our “proceedings.” And we also need a flexible caterer who can provide food throughout the day so there are no meal breaks per se. People will be having too much fun to break for meals all at once.

Open Space begins with people self-organizing an agenda. Now, that sounds hard to do on the fly with a group of several hundred people, and it does take a different type of pre-planning, as well as a cracker jack support team on site, but in the end it always works. I have never facilitated, or participated in, a failed Open Space meeting. In my experience, Open Space meetings have been by far the most meaningful.  Given the right structure and support on site, people make it work.

The GEO crowd is a great, smart, creative group of people. Let’s give them the conference they deserve – a conference they make for themselves.

GEO’s conference is my favorite gathering because it is a group of people who understand the importance of building strong, sound organizations, not just funding exciting new programs. Still, going out in this curiously wild April storm seemed a bit crazy. So I was all the more surprised when I was joined at the gate by roughly a dozen Bay Area foundation folks, all waiting for the same flight.

GEO is an important part of the nonprofit sector. I must be one of a very small number of people who have attended every one of its meetings, going back, if memory serves, to 1998. The first gathering of a few dozen people in Monterey has mushroomed into an international conference with several hundred foundation leaders and capacity builders.

Despite the dramatic loss of funding for organizational effectiveness issues over the past decade GEO has grown. It publishes important resources, including our Due Diligence Tool, and in addition to the biennial gathering, convenes smaller specialized meetings on many topics. GEO enriches the sector, even if getting to the conference requires traveling through rain, sleet, or snow, it’s always worth it.