Technology and Camp - Interview with Kevin Kelly

Technological Forces That Will Change the Camping Industry

It may be safe to say that we've started to reach a bit of a renaissance when it comes to technology at summer camp. If you've been a long-time lurker on the Summer Camp Professionals Facebook Community , you may have noticed that the conversations have started to shift from developing cell-phone policies and overall frustration with technology to a more acceptance/embracing (with a healthy dose of skepticism) attitude towards tech at camp.

According to Kevin Kelly, that progression is probably a good thing.

Kevin Kelly (Authour of The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future), joins Travis in this special interview edition of the CampHacker Podcast. Together, Kevin and Travis discuss his views on how not only the world as a whole, but our little camp world will surely be shaped by the integration of technology into the everyday.

Whether you're camp has a Pokemon Go-gettem attitude or if you are a camp still fighting for a true "unplugged" experience, this interview definitely has something for you to mull over.

We can't thank Kevin enough for joining us on the CampHacker Podcast. You should definitely head over to kk.org to check out more of Kevin's books, Cool Tools and other passion projects.

Thanks for listening, friends!

Stay tuned!

The next season of the CampHacker podcast will be coming soon!

Best of luck in wrapping up your summer and we'll see you in the fall.

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Tips For the Last Month Before Camp - CampHacker #91

22 Tips For the Last Month Before Camp

Sayonara season 6!

Well friends, the summer is fast approaching (stop, breathe, breathe again) and that means it's time for the CampHacker Podcast to break for the season. 

We know, we're sad too.

That being said, you know that we'd never leave you in a lurch. Especially not at this time of year. As our parting gift to you to keep you cool until we meet again in the fall, we have the whole team together to fill the last few pages of your spring journal with our top tips for this time of year. We hope that this episode gives you what you need right now whether it's a reassuring helping hand, or a fire under your rear. Either way, Dan, Joe, Gab and Travis brought their A-game for this one.

Here are the CampHacker's Top 22 Tips for The Last Month of Camp:

  1. Learn The Value of Good Enough

  2. Delegate Like It’s Your JOB (Playlists: Upbeat, Reflective, Conversational;

  3. Take a few minutes in the morning to clean your head (10 Deep breaths), The Headspace app

  4. Ready to Go smoothie packs

  5. 5 Minutes per day with your S.O. (maybe have some questions you ask each other) - get them on your schedule

  6. During Training: put things that they MUST remember in a different font/colour

  7. Walk

  8. Put Your Bills on Autopayment

  9. The Productivity Planner - Questions “What is the One Most Important Task of the Day?”

  10. Gab’s 1 Minute, Five Minute or 15 Minute Question Rule.   1 Minute Questions get asked and answered now, the others get scheduled

  11. Stop using the excuse of not having enough time - instead talk about your priorities

  12. Do Something that Makes You Happy every day!   Get Silly with your staff and/or campers

  13. Do stuff that gives you joy - Joe - scroll saw name tags

  14. Listen to Great books - keep feeding your brain

  15. Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator - Google Chrome extension

  16. https://unroll.me/ - get random newsletters out of your email newsletter

  17. Compliment people - express gratitude (to people who work for you and those you work for)

  18. Believe in yourself, believe that it all is going to go well.

  19. Have a confidant (outside of your camp, not your spouse)

  20. Let campers and staff see your hobbies

  21. The Checklist Manifesto book

  22. Let it Go

Tool of the Week – Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

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Debriefing a Day at Camp With Your Staff - CampHacker #90

Making the End of the Day Meaningful (part 2!)

   Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Stitcher

   Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Stitcher

If you’ve had a chance to tune into the last few episodes of the CampHacker Podcast, you’ll have heard that on Episode 88, we had intended to talk about debriefing your day at camp with everyone, but as most great camp conversations go, we ran out of time to cover it all! We hit a ton of great points about debriefing the day with campers, but we didn’t want to rush through the staff community part of this discussion.

That bring us to now.

This episode of the Podcast is dedicated to help our staff members get the most out of their daily, weekly, and seasonal experiences at camp. Whereas we usually delegate the camper’s nightly devotions to the counsellors (Ep. 88 has some ideas on how you can be that person too), we, as directors need to present our staff teams with those same types of opportunities.

There are a ton of different ways to facilitate this (again - grab your notebooks for this episode) but largely you can think about staff debriefing as either coming directly from you (“can I talk to you for a second?” conversations) or through facilitating large group debriefs (great moments in camping) or maybe a bit of both. As well, the type of debriefs that we facilitate for our staff can fall into two categories, intrapersonal (gratitude journaling) or interpersonal (wellness/prayer partners) or again, maybe both.

With the list of ideas that you’re surely going to have from this episode, we hope that you feel inspired to shake up your staff meetings and make time to facilitate those conversations that inspire your staff to get thinking.

What's one debriefing idea that you're going to introduce this summer? Please share in the comment section below, we'd love to hear it! 

 

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Bonus Content - Just for you!

Tri-State Camp Conference keynote speakers:
The Great Generational Shift and Managing Millennials - Bruce Tulgan 
Growing Leaders and Generation iY - Dr Tim Elmore

A Great TED Talk:
The Power of Believing That You Can Improve - Carol Dweck