I am talking tomorrow at BayCHI along with giving the folks a taste of unconference process.
First I will do picture filled “tour” of unconfernce processes and patterns for about 1/2 an hour and then answering some questions.
The irony of being asked to speak about designing unconferences is not lost on me because conferences have experts or distinguished speakers share their knowledge broadcast style to an audience. I decided that it would only be appropriate to do what happens at unconferences tap into the knowledge is in the room because the BayCHI community has been to many 100’s of events, conferences, workshops, meetings. They know more collectively then I do.
We will use the discovery process of Appreciative Inquiry to share the knowledge in the room about effective and inspiring process at conferences.
The audience will divide up into dyads and answer these questions:
Think of a time in your entire conference going experience, when have you felt most alive, most inspired and most proud. What was it that made it a high point? Please tell that story. Follow up question What seemed particularly effective or innovative?
Then we will gather in small groups of 6-10:
First tell each others story to the others in the group.
2. Merge lists of key qualities and circumstances of peak (un)conference going experiences.
3. Pick from this list the top two elements.
Then with the whole audience will hear from each group the key elements they found in their group.
BJ a Dialogue Mapper will capture the whole audience participation. I will collect the papers that have the merged list of each of the groups and will post them likely on the dCamp wiki.
Appreciative Inquiry
Meet space technology improvement for etech and other 'traditional' conferences
Ao the physical space situation here at etech is horrible. The rooms are too small – it is not only sold out but over sold. We are sitting in the isles and standing 2 deep at the back of the room. Here is a summary of the current issues and some potential solutions.
Venues – flexible support for interaction:
It seems there is a real market for innovative collaborative community meet space. With the emergence of camps and unconferences what are the space that can support these events. The space where we meet – like the nowhere store was.
Accommodations – We need integrated diversity:
I am staying the youth hostel (it is the nicest one I have ever been in). Because for this event I want a nice bed to sleep in and I don’t care if I need to share with others. I am paying $72 for three nights (they make $96 if they sell out my 4 bed room). Some want the kind of accommodations that cost $300-$500 a night. How can you have those market nees and everything in between near by.
Food – good food reasonable cost:
How can you feed people good food for low cost. I think most coming to a conference would be able to afford about $10 a meal. Presentation doesn’t matter really the food does. This is what we paid for food at the internet identity workshop – people loved both lunches.
Hotels are making a lot of money right now off conferences – charging a lot per day for people to attend an event and be fed.
Carpooling – How do we get there?:
There are some sides that do this like space share but it is not totally easy to do yet and you have to re-enter a profile all the time. How do I put out a carpool request on my blog that will get circulated to the people who are also traveling from my area and might be driving. How can this be managed in ways that don’t overwhelm everyone with my request but just those who might help.
Process – What are the processes we use when we gather?:
The submit, committee select, present model is a bit stale. I have gone to three talks this afternoon and keep thinking tell me something I don’t know yet. If you are going to present get to the point. I am a big believer in the short presentation – we use them at planetwork 5-10 min. Go through your concepts faster cause I get what you are saying.
Some things deserve the full attention of the whole group but only about 1/10th of what they make us give our full attention to.
Examples of this would be Bruce’s talk last night but – give him a lot of time because he has a reputation of killer talks that are engaging. Folks were not doing their e-mail during it they were listening. This morning it was the light table interaction demo (it was super amazing) the there was no typing. As well Linda Stone’s insightful talk about what was coming next after Continuous Partial Attention. Basically she said ‘analogue’ is the new ‘digital’ as jair would say.
There is open space technology, speed geeking, appreciative inquiry lots of different change processes [see Change Handbook]
Ambient Findablity of people:
(I am writing this post in the Ambient Findability presentation)
Help me find the people in this stack of 1,300+ folks that I want to meet and talk to. Who has identity problems that I can help people find the resources in our community? Who is working on socially good tech stuff that would love to know about Planetwork? Can applications like attendr and Hallway help? Can we get investment in these open source tools – if you want you can use the something like $10,000 + $10 a head intronetworks (that I get to use it for PCForum.) That is not accessible.
Technorati Tags: etech, etech06, camps, unconference
Conferences…issues
Scoble just did this long… post on conferences and the issues around creating them. Adding to Jeff Jarvis’ post here.
I left this comment….
Hey Scoble,
We in the identity community are trying to figure out the venue thing too. 1st key is a place that lets you bring in outside catoring.
We are also doing 75% open space at our next conference – so no planning for ’sessions’ the attendees create them based on what is alive in the room that day. This is how you have a discussion with 2000 folks – not trying to have it all in one big room. You can also use process like Appreciative Inquiry where a whole room of over 5000 folks can have a meaningful conversatino ‘together’. I think we should have a conference for conference organizers to mull on options and issues faced by our crowd. Innvation is needed in this space and market needs are largely unmet.
The breakdown on the Identity Workshop was a fee of $75 for a two day conference that included lunch.
Those of us who organized it did it volunteer and we broke even. Everyone loved us bucking the trend of the ‘expensive’ conference. We are hoping to pull it off again this year in May.
The details – We had about 70 paying attendees. 80 people attended. Lunch was $800 a day -$10 a head (and people liked the food)
We paid the venue about $800 a day (but the wifi was iffy and chairs not super comfy). We got someone to help with refreshments for about $400. A neutral sponsor came through and sponsored dinner for everyone the first (and only) evening of the conference.