Summing up Badge Summit
More system convening, community recognition and a dose of whimsy and weirdness
Thanks to Participate, we were able to take part at Badge Summit 2022 in Boulder, Colorado earlier this month. The Keep Badges Weird community was well represented! We had so much fun seeing KBW community members and having the opportunity to bond. There were great conversations, new ideas and connections and some table tennis tournaments.
In the lead up to Badge Summit, we had three goals for our participation.
1) Make sure people in the Keep Badges Weird community felt respected and recognised
A healthy community is one in which people feel like they belong. Belonging comes from connection. Finding ways to help people connect and share is what community building is all about.
We wanted to do something special for people who have been working to legitimise badges and recognition for a long time. We have a stealth badge (that isn’t so stealthy anymore) called “the O.G.”. It is a badge issued to people who have been involved in open badges since before January 2017. We invited people who earned the O.G. badge to a rooftop party on the Sunday evening before Badge Summit. Then in the most meta-badge fashion ever, we gifted these O.Gs a hat with a badge with a badge on a hat.
We also gave out iron-on patches of the other stealth badges, Keep Badges Weird stickers and a “I kept badges weird at Badge Summit” badge.
A community shouldn’t only recognise members through badges and swag, though. At the party and throughout the few days we were together in Boulder, we spent time together! Swag doesn’t substitute the recognition we can give one another through our conversations and attention.
We’re so excited to hear what people in this community are working on and to find ways to collaborate. We were reminded at how important in real life events are when you’re trying to change the world ;)
2) Help potential community members join and be able to interact with the community
A community needs to have low barriers to entry. It should also help people see themselves as part of something bigger. In KBW, we want to help members find meaningful contribution or reliable resources or whatever else they’re looking for.
We hosted two sessions designed to demystify some of what this community is working on. In the first, Wikis for Community Defined Skill Frameworks, we collaborated with KBW community members Don and Justin. The session helped people understand the need for Rich Skill Descriptors. It got attendees writing RSDs through a collaborative exercise that helped participants connect.
Our second session, Keep Badges Weird: helping people understand the badges landscape, felt like a big success. Our idea to explain Badge Pathways with the help of a pizza metaphor went well. At Badge Summit there were lots of interesting questions and a discussion around Open Recognition. We had lots of fun.
At the end, participants were invited to join the community. Everyone went away with some beautiful KBW stickers. To make it extra easy for new people to get involved with the community, Mark made the world’s most beautiful QR code.
3) Raise awareness of Open Recognition (i.e. non-credential use of badges)
Our third goal is the hardest to assess. Did we have an impact on people we interacted with and their understanding of Open Recognition? Did people at Badge Summit begin to understand that badging isn’t about supporting the old system of credentialing? That it should to be a new system for a different world? Time will tell.
We’re pleased to be members of a community that cares not only about “knowledge, skills and competencies”, but also things like talents, behaviours, aspirations, connections and more. Open Recognition is for every type of learning and this Community of Practice knows all about it. We were happy that we weren’t alone at Badge Summit. KBW community members had recognition friendly narratives on stage and in their sessions. Surely, the people who attended Badge Summit 2022 went away with a few ideas on how to integrate recognition into their badging programmes.
In the coming months, we’re looking forward to reconnecting with people we met at the Badge Summit. We will continue to explore how we can support people in finding ways to integrate Open Recognition. Do you have ideas on what the Keep Badges Weird community could do to help you? Start a conversation about it!
