While pursuing her masters degree in education from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and then producing NPR’s Learning Matters podcast, Christine Renaud became fascinated with how new technology could impact learning. The year was 2008, Facebook and Twitter were both gaining traction, and Renaud noticed people using the social media platforms for knowledge and instruction.
“People would post things like, ‘I need to learn how to use Photoshop tomorrow. Can someone help me tonight?’ People were mobilizing their own networks to learn something new, and I thought that was interesting,” Renaud, 34, says. But Renaud recognized that these existing platforms were not focused on peer learning, so she decided to create something that is. In 2011, Renaud launched E-180 to facilitate meetups—what she calls “brain dates”—between people who are seeking and offering knowledge. The Web platform started with a focus on individual, community-based connections—and now has more than 7,200 members—but soon after it launched Renaud realized the service is also suited for conferences, associations, and venues that want to serve as learning hubs.
[PULLQUOTE]
“Our mission is to transform everybody into a lifelong teacher. And we think a conference is a great place to do that,” Renaud says. “The main thing we are doing is making sure people don’t just learn from the person on stage but also from the person sitting next to them.” Working with the event host, E-180 invites attendees to create profiles indicating specific topics they would like to learn about and topics they can educate others about. Users then browse these offers and requests and send invitations to meet people at the event, and E-180 provides staff to facilitate the matchmaking on site. After a brain date, participants can rate each other, and other users can see these ratings. E-180’s first conference client was C2 Montréal in 2013, where about 1,000 brain dates took place. Since then, Renaud estimates they have worked with nearly two dozen events including the 2014 Global Entrepreneurship Summit and the Doha Goals Forum three years in a row.
Renaud says initially conference organizers expressed doubt that their attendees would want to participate. “But people are more generous than you think. We always have more offers than requests for knowledge,” she says. At C2 Montréal in May, E-180 launched its mobile app, Braindater, which is intended to facilitate spontaneous connections. “Let’s say you’re at a conference and you have 45 minutes with nothing to do,” Renaud says. “You can use the app to know exactly at that moment who knows what and who is available for a brain date right now.”
Back to the Most Innovative People in Events and Meetings list
