We started the BEtreat workshops in summer 2010. Both of us have our birthdays in July. We thought it would be interesting to celebrate our birthdays with a retreat for our clients and others working in the field of social learning. So the workshops were named Bev (B) and Etienne’s (E) retreat (treat)!

We have two main locations:

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California

If you are participating in the regular face-to-face or individual BEtreat in California, then the workshops happen in Grass Valley California.  It is a charming historical mining town located in the “Gold Country” in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.  There are street fairs in the summer, tasting rooms for local wineries, and beautiful hiking and swimming at the nearby Yuba river.

Grass Valley is easily reachable from Sacramento airport. There are accommodations for all tastes and budgets, including small “bed & breakfast,” historical and modern hotels, and affordable motels.

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Portugal

If you are participating in the regular face-to-face or individual BEtreat in Portugal, then the workshops happen in Setúbal. It is a historical, post-industrial beach city located 60km south of Lisbon. It is easily reachable from Lisbon airport, which is served by all major airlines. It has plenty of good accommodations and is ideal for a family outing.

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In addition, special BEtreats can take place in most parts of the world. Just talk to us.

Accomodation is included in an individual BEtreat.

For the regular BEtreat in California, you need to find your own accomodation. We have a list of the local hotels, their distance from the venue, and prices on this page here. You could also check out Airbnb for other options, mostly cheaper than the hotels.

Integrating online and face-to-face participation is a core theme of the workshop. To this end, we commit to offering online participants a full experience of the workshop. This means that everyone in the workshop endeavors to make this integration possible by exploring the technologies and the practices that are required.

All online participants have reported that it was a unique experience. For those who have done both online and face-to-face participation some say they preferred the online experience, others say they preferred to participate face-to-face. Perhaps it has something to do with your learning style.

It is a lot of time in front of the computer, so if you are thinking of participating online, do this short survey to see if you are prepared for it.

Generally speaking the state-of-the-art is for people who are working with communities of practice and want to get better at it. The research and evaluation is for people who are interested in the theory for research purposes of the value-creation framework for evaluation. Having said that, we do get academics and evaluators in the state-of-the-art and practitioners from Higher Ed in the research and evaluation.

You will most likely meet people who work in academic institutions at the academic BEtreat and people from different sectors at the state-of-the-art. The sorts of outcomes we have for the different workshops look like this:

state-of-the-art

• articulate the context and the challenges of a social learning endeavor
• argue for the value of a social learning approach to stakeholders
• employ the basic models of social learning
• take a social learning approach to solving problems
• perform as a social learning leader

academic

• discuss the theoretical concepts
• decide when a CoP perspective is useful for a research or evaluation project
• apply that perspective to data analysis

Yes, contact us for group discounts, company programs, and BEtreats hosted at your location.

Funding is definitely an issue. We don’t have access to funding sources ourselves. We do offer 50% scholarships for people from low and middle-income countries and may be able to find a neighbor to host you here, if you are planning to participate face-to-face. But we have no way to help with travel expenses. We can also write a letter if you apply to a source of funds.

• Refunds of the full fee will be made up to April 30.
• Refunds of 50% will be made until June 1.
• All refunds incur 100 dollars administration fee.
• No refunds after June 1.
• Substitutions possible at any time.

If you have done a BEtreat workshop yourself and would like to spread the experience, or if you come from a low-income country with no way of participating in BEtreat unless it’s near you, then contact us to see if we can make it happen together.

We partnered with Tony Carr, University of Cape Town for a BEtreat in South Africa in 2013. And in 2014 we held BEtreat Canada in partnership with Sylvia Curry and Leva Lee of BCcampus. In 2016 we partners with the Center for Excellence in Finance to hold a BEtreat in Slovenia. We are game!