Tiny House Conference » workshop

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!

Volunteer Tickets – Tiny House Conference

Ryan Mitchell — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 19:27:09 +0000

One of the things we realized from the get go is that while we feel like the conference we are putting on is a great value, we know that there are those people out there who aren’t able to save up for a ticket. We also knew that we’d need some help at the event because its going to be big, so we need to be sure everyone has a great time and we need help making that happen.

So that is why we created our “pay what you can” volunteer tickets. The concept is simple, pay what you can within your budget and then we will have you volunteer at the event helping us out to make up whatever the difference is. We want to reserve these tickets for those who are truly not able to afford a full price ticket.

There are some requirements of the volunteer that we have because of the nature of things we need help with.

Arrive on Friday by 6pm and stay until Sunday 5pm. No exceptions.
Be willing to help attendees with a positive attitude
Be able to stand for at least 1 hr at a time, walk, bend, talk, and lift up to 20lbs
Have a working cell phone the days of the event

So if you think you meet the above and want to attend on a volunteer ticket let us know by filing out the below form. There is a limit of 15 slots available and we will review every person’s application. We will select who the tickets will go to in the next few weeks, so tell us why you’d like to come and help us understand your situation.

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.

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.

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.