So one day, while chuckling my way through a Dr. Vaine podcast, I thought “Gee I know some funny and clever people….” and then “……but they are spread across Australia and several other continents”. And then I wonder… what are the chances of getting those inquiring minds together and creating some thought provoking satire? or raucous (yet oh-so-witty) comedy? even just sending ourselves up and getting silly?

Perhaps it was a symptom of being “cooped up” in the gorgeous but sleepy Blue Mountains on 12 months maternity leave, watching one too many Wiggles videos with the kids, or just being starved of adult company….? Whatever it was, I got the crazy idea in my head of a fun event for the actKM conference this year – created by actKMers, performed by actKMers. Was it possible? We’re literally all over the globe, and putting together anything of this kind is nearly always a time consuming, face-to-face process.

I did have a precedent. A number of years ago I had the privilege of working my way through a truly engaging and challenging management development program with about a dozen remarkable people. We’d built up the kind of bond that you do with those whom you’ve struggled on the tough projects, worked through the conflicts and experienced a taste of truly great teamwork. As we got started on the final 2 day workshop we shared a desire to celebrate our time together and mark its conclusion with a “revue”. Having no time to prepare didn’t put us off. By adopting a version of the Good News Week TV show, we hived off the content development, called for volunteers, threw in a couple of songs and Hey Presto! .. by evening we had a show! (Seriously – we did all this during our breaks).

One of the nice aspects was while our fantastic trainers, John, Wendy and Ralph had initially been a little “wary” of being the butt of some of our jokes, by putting them on the GNW teams they had a ball, and happily sent themselves up before we got around too :-D The night was a raging success, and a whole lot of fun to boot.

And so I thought……. with the tools we have freely available to us today – what is stopping a clever bunch of people like us (actKM and anyone who even loosely associates with this community) from doing that on a larger scale?

Not much I think!

And so the “Collaboration Cabaret!” was born.

What’s the most memorable and fun learning exercise you’ve ever experienced? What made it “stick”? What made it fun?