Tiny House Conference » tiny house

Connect With Amazing Speakers

Ryan Mitchell — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 20:27:59 +0000

I’ve had the fortune of attending many tiny house workshops and events, most of which I was speaking at. One thing that really stands out about the Tiny House Conference is the sheer number of awesome speakers we are going to have at the event giving workshops. You’ve heard the old adage “quality vs quantity” but when it comes to the speakers we are having at the conference its BOTH quality AND quantity.

That’s what is so amazing about this event, that we are going to have some many tiny house builders, designers and those who live in a tiny house themselves that you’ll be getting an all access pass to the largest brain trust in tiny houses. I have known many of these people for many years and am ecstatic to get them all in one place.

See You In Charlotte!

Making Connections

Ryan Mitchell — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 17:00:14 +0000

One of the most powerful things about the tiny house movement is that it is a community. Meaning we are not only building tiny houses, but we are building community around those houses. There is nothing more inspiring than connecting with people who have done what you hope to do and to meet people who are on the same journey you are.

At events like this conference we are able to find great connections with people that are not only interested in tiny houses, but we often find people who are interested in tiny houses from where we live. This is big. When I started my journey of building my tiny house I was able to find a few local people who loved tiny houses and even one couple who was building a house themselves. This was a huge help to my own process because we could talk about what we were doing, where we found certain materials and tackle problems together.

The connections you can make at events is really amazing because you’ll never find more tiny house folks in one place. So we welcome you to connect with the community. We’ll see you in Charlotte.

Food Trucks For The Conference

Ryan Mitchell — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 21:21:22 +0000

We are going to be inviting some food trucks to the Tiny House Conference and we wanted to see what you all thought about who we should invite! The event is near the edge of Charlotte and pretty close to some decent restaurants, but we thought why not bring the food to us!? Many of these places we have eaten from and we love to support local business while we delicious food. So it seemed like a no brainier! Feel free to recommend other food trucks in the area!

The first one up is a personal favorite, I eat from them every time I go to the farmers market. They always have amazing food. Check them out at: Roots

These folks are another local favorite that many people rave about. Check the out at Pig & Cow

The Tiny Kitchen also pushes out great food around the Queen City, check them out here

So what truck do you think we should invite for our conference?

Open Space – Self Organizing Conference Learning

Ryan Mitchell — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 12:50:31 +0000

A few years ago I was introduce to the concept of Open Space at training I went to and was blow away by its potential. While many people haven’t heard of Open Space, once explained, they intuitively understand it. The concept emerged when some people began to notice that most of the learning and real work at conferences, didn’t happen in sessions or keynotes, but in between sessions, afterwards and on coffee breaks.

From that they developed Open Space – A self organizing learning conference session. We decided to incorporate this into the Tiny House Conference at the very end because people will have all these ideas swirling in their heads and some will want to talk about that one burning question they have yet to get answered. That’s what Open Space is all about!

The process is simple:

Participants take a sheet of paper, write down a suggested topic, question etc
They place the sheet of paper on the wall to determine a place and time for the discussion
They then share with the group what the topic is and where/when the conversation will take place
After the wall is filled, people choose a topic, meet the others interested in that topic, and start talking

What this allows you to do is take control over your own learning, to get all those unanswered questions resolved and meet people who are interested in your interest. Below is a video of how it looks in practice.

Several Workshops Rolled Into One

Ryan Mitchell — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 17:41:41 +0000

When we asked tiny house folks what they wanted in an event they very much liked the workshop format, but felt that most workshops didn’t have enough speakers and they wanted to see more tiny houses in person. So we set out to gather great people who live in and build tiny houses to be our speakers. We also wanted to be sure that there were going to be a lot of tiny houses so you can get a feel for what it is like to be in them.

So we had to figure out how we were going to cram all of this into one weekend so we decided to do two tracks to double the talks we are going to have. Now we know you can’t be in two places at once so we came up with a solution to that too.

We are going to be video recording each session so that you don’t miss anything. Each session will be available for you online after the event along with any power points and hand outs. It is included with every ticket and only attendees will have access to it. This way you can see the sessions you didn’t get to and no more worries about taking notes or missing something, each will be there for you to view as much as you please.

Flash Back To The First Mini Conference

Ryan Mitchell — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 08:10:19 +0000

We had some people wanting to know a little bit more about the previous mini conference that we had back in early 2011, so here we go!

From our post on The Tiny Life:

We had an interesting start, Saturday’s events were pushed to Sunday as tornadoes touched down in North Carolina, we lost a few folks because of it, but still had a decent turn out. We had decided to work along side Charlotte’s green ecofriendly event because we had so much over lap. In the process I had promised to lend my chickens to the people talking about urban farming . My day started out at 7am – I am not a morning person – and it off to wrangle some chickens from my coop for the urban farming section of the event. They certainly weren’t happy with me for most of the morning, but we got our tent setup for the day.

The day started off slow, but things really picked up quickly. I gave three talks through out the day on Tiny Houses to around 50 people interested in Tiny Houses. I also had boat loads of people coming up to me and saying “you’re that Tiny House guy aren’t you”. The coverage by Mother Earth, Tiny House Blog and Treehugger resonated loudly with the people of Charlotte and surrounding. So most of the day I was juggling talking about urban chickens, tiny houses, and tours for the off the grid container home.