A game that reminds people just how good a conference can get:

thinking together
learning from each other
creating community
recycling, even

all at the same time:

Get the kit, and the kaboodle, too

Bernie (Kaboodle) DeKoven invented Junkyard Golf, wrote the book on Junkyard Sports, and can be a surprisingly funny guy. Sure, you can buy the kit, and do the whole thing on your own. But you can also hire Bernie to help you make the Junkyard Golf experience even more entertaining and relevant. His playful banter helps keep people light-hearted and engaged. His debriefing questions and insights help make the learning opportunities that much more focused. Contact Bernie by phone or email.

Junkyard Golf
The Conference Kickstart Kit

Bringing people together with fun

Just after dinner on the very first evening, right before the keynote, or maybe even instead of the keynote, for about an hour, you give everyone a taste of what it's like to be part of a successful conference. And why.

The heart of the Junkyard Golf Conference Kickoff Kit is a structured learning experience based on the concept of Junkyard Sports. It involves people in a series of fun, structured tasks that begin with their creation of their own variation of golf, and ends with a relaxed, but thoughtful conversation about the success and relevance of the conference itself.

Given your average business conference, given all that business and all those people, it's all too easy for conference goers to lose sight of the opportunities the conference presents. People wander off in small groups, going from session to session, creating their own little community while losing sight of all the inter-relating communities the conference has brought together.

Using their Conference Kickoff Kits, people experience what it is like to be part of a creative, collaborating community while at the same time discovering the genius of other communities and other perspectives. All while building miniature golf-like things. Table-top miniature golf course-like things. In maybe 20 minutes, out of a collection of recycled industrial scrap, and whatever else they can find.

Conference-goers get focused, creative, relaxing, making connections. Connections between pieces of scrap, between the random collection of people they're sitting with at the table, between the people at their table (the "team") and people at other tables (the "community"), between the game they're playing and the conference they're attending.

An hour of playing with the Conference Kickoff Kit sets the tone for everything after - for the entire conference. You can play Junkyard Golf right before, say, lunch, or maybe after, or maybe after the keynote. 12 people. 400 people.

See, for example, how Junkyard Golf was used to kickoff the 2004 conference of the North American Simulation and Game Association and to build leadership at Southwest Airlines.

Good Stuff, Good Fun, Good Learning

100% of the materials used are industrial rejects. And it's all clean, "neat" stuff: thick, colorful paper cylinders, sturdy plastic cones, sticky-back stuff, fabric and yarn. Sorted into identical kits for each team, the collection of stuff helps highlight creativity.and ingenuity, design and playfulness. Because there are no "right" ways to use the stuff, people feel invited rather than threatened, enticed into play. This results in both laughter and learning.

Reuse

"Is your Junkyard Golf Conference Kickoff Kit reusable?" you ask. " If you buy it, are you licensed to play it again and again?" you ask again. "Isn't reuse a key component of the game?" I reply.

You should also know that no matter how hard you try, it's very likely that what came out of a box will not be the same as what went back in. Luckily, the changes are usually quite minor, so you can play Junkyard Golf again and again. You can even add neat stuff of your own, customizing the content to the customer, as it were, so to speak.

Contact Bernie . Buy your own.

Buy from Bernie

The Junkyard Golf Conference Kickstart Kit includes everything you need to play it.

Background materials on fun and collaboration
Player guides
Packaged, selected, uniform collections of neat stuff for all
Step-by-step instructions for facilitating and debriefing the game, for example:
- Challenge and motivation - the team's success is determined by how inviting and involving their golf hole proves to be. Discussing how the team worked to determine the difficulty of the hole, and what they did to increase or decrease the challenge leads to some highly relevant explorations of challenge and motivation in organizational structures.
- Teamwork vs. Communitywork - once each team has finished making the hole, participants suddenly discover that a whole golf course has been created. A discussion about the value of shifting perspective, from hole to whole, can lead to important insights about the nature of the relationships between business teams.
- Creative Repurposing - much of the fun of the "junkyard" approach lies in the way people repurpose industrial scrap to build a golfing challenge. This experience of "creative repurposing" is more than fun, it's a survival skill, and the more that people talk about creative repurposing at work the more effective they become in using the tools at their disposal.
- (See also the debriefing notes from the NASAGA event)

Costs and courses

The Three Hole (table) Course package includes three separate, and almost equal sets of recycled materials, three player guides, 36 rule summaries, and one leader guide. This basic package is enough for 6-36 participants. The cost is $300.
The Nine Hole (table) Course can serve up to 100 people, and is available at $750.
The 18 Hole (table) Course serves twice as many (200) and costs $1250.
The 36 Hole (table) Course is for up to 400 people and can be purchased for $2000.

Plus shipping, handling and taxes.

For more information or immediate purchase, contact Bernie by phone or email.

Get the kit, and the kaboodle, too

Bernie (Kaboodle) DeKoven invented Junkyard Golf, wrote the book on Junkyard Sports, and can be a surprisingly funny guy. He is available to help you make the Junkyard Golf experience even more entertaining and relevant. His playful banter helps keep people light-hearted and engaged. His debriefing questions and insights help make the learning opportunities that much more focused. Contact Bernie by phone or email.