“I grew up in a pretty fortunate environment where I had things mapped out for me: private school, private college and then probably an Ivy League university. But after school I decided that I didn’t want to go on that route. Instead I went to a large public university in Colorado. Later on, when I talked to my old friends from back home, who were attending those top universities, I heard that they all had jobs lined up already, typically in investment banking. But I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. I thought I was pretty smart and ambitious so I also went for—and got—a banking job.  

I spent several years in the corporate world, culminating with a consulting role at the Monitor Group. The consulting job was hard work. For about a year I worked really long hours, but always with a lingering doubt about the point of it all.  It was a job where you simply worked for someone, with very little say in where the company was going.  And then the financial crisis hit.  I got laid off a month before Christmas, which gave me plenty of time to think. Nobody was going to hire me just before the holiday season, except retail stores. I spent that time with some good friends, smart people who were doing interesting things. One of those weekends I spent in Boulder with my friend Andrew Hyde, who is the founder of StartupWeekend. StartupWeekend is a type of ‘unconference’ where a number of aspirant entrepreneurs, developers and designers spend a weekend together working non-stop. At the end of it they have the basics of 10 to 15 web products, at demo or proof-of-concept level. That’s when I got the idea to do something similar but for unemployed people.  There are so many unemployed people around and a lot of them have really valuable skills and talents. There had to be a way to tap into that capital.   

One of my friends was one of the founders of BarCamp, another unconference. That really took off and the media loved it. So I borrowed a part of the name and called it LaidOffCamp.  Beyond that I didn’t worry too much about the concept or the format. My first priority was to get a number of unemployed people together and to organise a small unconference—a community discussion—where we could share ideas and expertise, for example, about how to market yourself as a freelancer, how to prepare for a job interview, or even how to complete a tax return form.  We tried to organise something pretty low-key and informal, but with a good mix of people. And that we got.  For example, some of the folks had been in the workforce for 40 years but didn’t know what LinkedIn was.  

Our first event was in March 2009 in San Francisco. It blew away all my expectations. I had hoped for about 50 to 100 attendees and if one blogger attended I would have been very excited. As it turned out, we sold 600 tickets. The media jumped on it. TechCrunch wrote about it, before the event even happened. They were followed by a few news publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, and then the big guys—Business Week, The Wall Street journal, CBS/ABC—came to the event. That created huge momentum. I was involved in the organisation of the next three events but all the other events after that happened completely autonomously, using the Wiki we had set up. That was amazing to see. Some of the events I didn’t have even know about until much later.

Later in 2009 I went on a trip around the world to think about the next step in my life. By then there were two small pockets in the US where people were organising LaidOffCamp events. There were others too, but the whole point of LaidOffCamp is to help people find jobs or start businesses, so in sense we were actively eradicating our own driving forces. Most of the people who helped organise LaidOffCamp got jobs. This is in contrast to BarCamp where participants do not change their situation that radically.

 

When I got back from my trip I first looked for some consulting work; I needed to earn some money.  And at the moment I’m considering a job at an interesting start-up in San Francisco (ed. note. Chris got the job – he is currently employed as business development manager at SimpleGeo).

Entrepreneurship has become very hot. Twenty or even ten years ago, people’s ambition was to get a job. But now, entrepreneurship is the expected thing to do, perhaps too much so. I suspect that the larger companies are suffering because their best and brightest stars are out there starting companies. For myself, I'm not sure I'm ready yet. I don't know if I have the brand or the experience right now. I was lucky enough be invited to speak at South by Southwest, but that’s because it’s the only conference that looks at people’s knowledge about a topic and not just the VIP status of speakers. I realise that I need to find a way to accelerate the path to entrepreneurship, but at this stage I think I can learn a great deal from other people. That’s why I want to join a start-up.  

 

In Silicon Valley the new trend among VCs is to invest at the earliest possible level, along the lines of YCombinator and Tech Stars. These two started it but now there are about twenty of these initiatives. The concept is very appealing. Rent out some office space, invite 20-30 aspirant entrepreneurs and give them a little money and plenty of coaching in return for equity.  For the entrepreneurs it’s great too. Why not spend a summer giving it a go. And if it works you’re pretty much guaranteed that the VCs will look for additional funding. What I wonder about, however, is how we could expand this entrepreneurial energy to other sectors. These types of initiatives always happen in the technology/internet space because it’s so cheap to start an internet company. But how do you stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation in more capital intensive industries, the bedrock of much of our economy? 

Education is due for some pretty fundamental change, I suspect. Education is typically a one-to-many relationship. I noticed that at school there was increasing focus on group work but ultimately the core principle of one person—the teacher—telling the students what to learn remained in place.  But often that teacher does not have the right experience or knowledge to effectively teach what young people need. For example, I had a marketing professor in his 60s who was teaching us e-marketing; but he had no idea what people were doing online. I suspect that this one-to-many relationship will change. Everyone has a piece of knowledge that is relevant and valuable to someone else. The challenge is to facilitate that exchange. I think that the skills that teachers will need in the future are facilitating and conducting productive learning conversations.  

Things are changing in the way we organise for work too. We’re seeing these coalitions of people emerge who have vetted each other. A little like the coops of residents that run apartment blocks.  Or in the way that co-working spaces begin to function like integrated businesses. They’re not only sharing costs anymore, but also cross-selling services and sharing in wealth. Obviously there is still resistance to these more open, more fluid forms of organisation but it is beginning to change. Companies are gradually waking up to the fact that it’s about people, not companies.