Speaker dinners with wine produce knowledge transfer.
technique — attributed to Deborah Szekely
Szekely's weekly speaker dinners started as self-interest: she wanted to know what guests at the ranch were hearing. Seven or eight speakers sit together over a meal. Wine is always present so people relax and chat. What she found over time was that the dinners also produced unexpected value: the speakers got to know each other and shared knowledge across disciplines. A neuroscientist and a yoga teacher and an investor would have conversations that none of them would have had inside their respective fields. The technique generalizes. Small intimate gatherings of cross-disciplinary experts produce knowledge transfer that no formal conference setup could engineer.
For program directors, conference organizers, and convening leaders running multi-speaker events. The technique is most useful as a complement to public sessions, not as a replacement for them.
speaker-dinners, wine, knowledge-transfer, intimate-format