The typical conference consists of a series of PowerPoint presentations that tend to render participants passive. Students of learning have long abandoned the transfer model that underlies such one-way communication. We propose an alternative theory of conferences that sees them as a forum for learning, mutual inspiration and human flourishing. We…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the fact that conferences for professionals rely on massive one-way communication and hence produce little learning for delegates--and to introduce an alternative, the "learning conference", that involves delegates in fun and productive learning processes.…