The unconference
I’m glad to report that the unconference worked and I just told unconference guru Dave Winer that in email.
The point was that the people in the room would set the agenda and they’d accomplish this via conversation, not lecture. I think it worked for a few reasons:
1. Everyone in the room wanted to accomplish the same thing. We had a goal. We all had different ideas about how to get there. But we came in wanting to move the peanut, not just chew on it.
2. There were the right number of people there: enough to give us varied perspectives and experience but not so many that people couldn’t be heard.
3. The organizers set the exact right tone. They made the essential opening points so everyone else didn’t have to. They set a high expectation for work and civility. Then they let the conversation happen.
4. We came in knowing what the unformatted format would be, so everyone knew what to expect: unconference rules. Thanks, Dave.
5. We had stellar leadership. Wendy Warren, an editor at the Daily News, is a star. When people tried to turn her into the teacher with their raised hands and plaintive-call-on-me-please looks, she tried to get people to just have a conversation. She joined in that conversation but never tried to take it over. When things bogged down, she raised the next subject. When things threatened to get a little citric, she lightened things up. Charm helps. These sessions still need leaders, just not lecturers. The unconference isn’t about anarchy but about empowering and that’s what she did. So if you unconference, pick your leaders well.
This makes me all the more exhausted and exasperated looking at programs for other conferences coming up with damnable panels — and I’m on some: 45 minutes of droning down the line followed by 15 minutes of questions from the audience, when the real goal should be answers from everyone. Almost as bad are the sessions where everyone get a “turn” but because they happen in order of hand raised, the discussion turns into a festival of the nonsequitor (well, I want to respond to the person who spoke three turns ago….). The goal should always be conversation.
There’s a meeting coming up about linking and I was quite obnoxious in my response to the invitation, pitching the Winer gospel of the unconference. I told the organizer to blow up the panels and tear down the essentially insulting distinction between panel and audience and get the people in the room to truly link. He should have told me to go blow but, to his credit, he said he’s trying to figure out how to do this. I know it looks daunting, but it’s really not. At the first Bloggercon, when Dave told me minutes before my session was to begin that the entire room was the panel, I turned into Phil Donahue and let it happen.
At the upcoming Syndicate conference, organizer Eric Norlin pushed me to be one of the keynoters. I tried to refuse; I said that I didn’t know as much as the room, accumulated. I finally agreed to do it only if I could turn into Phil and start the session from the end — the “question” period, except I’ll be the one asking the people in the room questions because they’re the ones with the answers. There will be too many people in the room and not enough time and not a clear enough goal to have an unconference like yesterday’s. Will this work in an hour? Will it be of any value? Will it be utter humilation? I have no idea. But it’s worth the risk to blow up the broken format of the conference. I’ll let you know how the unkeynote works: or better yet, you’ll read on the blogs of those there what didn’t work and why.
: OPML camp struggles with how to unconference.
Tags: conferences
March 26th, 2006 at 8:25 am
[...] Jeff Jarvis has a great post on making an unconference work. We should try to follow as many of his suggestions as possible. Would several broadly defined sessions, within which an unconference format was used make sense? For example, in a session on tools that lasted 2 hours on the first day, anyone could come up to a computer in the front of the room and give a demo of their favorite product, not just the authors of products. On the other hand, there is no reason why an author should be forbidden to speak about his or her own code. A session leader for this format would act solely as a facilitator to make sure everyone gets a turn, and help set time limits for each demo. [...]
March 26th, 2006 at 8:33 am
[...] It seems from reading Karl Martino and Jeff Jarvis, that yesterday’s unconference in Philadelphia was a success. [...]
April 9th, 2006 at 11:48 am
We’ve debated this too in organizing Beyond Broadcast 2006, and ended up with a hybrid approach that combines small panels (none of those sprawling 5-person messes), ‘high-order bits’ of short demo presentations, and a day 2 that is run entirely on an open-meeting ‘unconference’ basis. There’s a kind of meta layer going on here too since the topic of the convening is how public media broadcasters can embrace participatory models, so the event itself demonstrates that attempt.
April 14th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
[...] So that’s why I thought we’d all just how up at a bar and wing it. But Dave says “No!” Unconferences have to be meticulously planned out affairs with dedicated DLs (discussion leaders) who make sure that people don’t ramble on, the conversation keeps moving and that the topic is properly covered. That’s why having great DLs (like Jeff Jarvis) is key to the success of a unconference. [...]
May 30th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
I was at the Syndicate Conference wherein Jeff did his Unkeynote not only worked. It really worked. I believe he got his licks in, in terms of contributing to the interaction, but also did a masterful job of brining out the collective wisdom of the group. His opening set of slides included “Conferences Suck!” “Panels Suck!” and “Keynotes Suck!”
From there, he did a great job of making “the story” come together.
I was so inspired by what Jeff did, that I (CEO of Podango) have bought a Silver Sponsorship and a 20 x 20 booth at the Portable Media Expo in September instead of the normal 10×10 booth so that the event can have an unconference there, for all attendees. I think it will help them get great benefit from being at the show. If only I could get Jeff to come be a great DL there…
At any rate. Jeff is a master!
Thanks, Jeff, for the inspiration and the example of how to get a group of attendees to share openly their collective experience in a directed manner.