Despite a very successful Passion Talks Vision Summit this past weekend, I’m going to talk about a new sort of talk that has come about– Passion Micro-Talks. First, let’s fill people in on what a Passion Talk has been. A Passion Talk has been 15 minute talks given by academics and professionals about their expertise, experiences, and why they care. The design of these talks are modeled after academic talks, for which a 5 minute Q and A follows.
On Tuesday, January 27th, we piloted a variation of Passion Talks geared more towards industry professionals. These Passion Micro-Talks are expected to be around 5 minutes long, with three presentation slides (or more, as needed). A major difference between a Passion Talk and a Micro-Talk is that the Micro-Talk is much more succinct, to the point, and guided. The prompt for every Micro-Talk is as follows:
- Who you are (Identity)
- What you do (Vocation)
- Why you care / Why you live (Passion)
The idea of these talks is to make it easy for industry professionals to pull together a talk on the spot, and be able to rapidly share a variety of topics. The lightning-esque nature of these talks encourage discussion, sharing of ideas, and connecting common interests.
We also had a great 45 minute worship set beforehand, led by Jeff on Guitar/Vocals, Jon on Bass, and myself on Harmonies/Djembe. About 20 people were in attendance, and eight people stayed after and shared dinner. After prayer and worship (the first 45 minutes), we went right into the three talks for the night.
First, was Alain, who talked about characteristics of what it should look like to be a Christian at work. Then we had Gary talk about computer security and how privacy is a Kingdom concern. Finally, I gave a Meta talk about the vision for these quarterly Large Group gatherings. The formula is simple, we get together to do worship and pray, then we pick some number of talks per meeting, afterwards, sharing a meal together. Unsurprisingly, there was some great fellowship and conversations that followed.
In particular, Gary was thinking that this sort of meeting would be a great witness, if we didn’t Christianize it so much. We concluded that the quarterly meetings serve as an important stage for building relationships and strengthening how we articulate our passions as the Body of Christ. However, as we collect a large number of these Micro-Talks we could create an event of JUST talks where we invite our colleagues and managers.
The talks were a great beginning and really inspired the people who came to give their own talks next time. Oh, and I forgot… the attendance was actually ~20 people + 1 puppy 🙂
Intellectual Faith 
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