open space Archives : Conferences That Work

Six reasons why unconferences aren’t more popular

Monday, September 11th, 2023 by Adrian Segar

Why aren’t unconferences more popular?

Events and media consultant Julius Solaris shared at the Unforgettable Experience Design Summit that he was initially very enthusiastic about unconference format events. He thought conferences would eventually adopt unconference models. But Julius didn’t see them catch on and now focuses on other aspects of the meeting industry.

I’ve been a facilitator, designer, and proponent of unconferences (aka peer conferences) since 1992. I still believe that these events, when well-designed and facilitated, offer the best attendee experience for the majority of conferences that are held today.

So, why aren’t unconferences more popular? Here are my six reasons.

1—Unconferences that aren’t

According to Wikipedia, unconferences are participant-driven meetings where the agenda is created by the attendees at the beginning of the meeting.

Unfortunately, far too many event promoters either haven’t a clue about what an unconference is, or, worse, deliberately call their events unconferences when they aren’t. They use “unconference” as a marketing buzzword to make their event sound cooler.

Let’s be clear. An event that:

Asks potential presenters to submit pre-event proposals for sessions isn’t an unconference.
Includes breakout sessions as well as presentations isn’t an unconference. [No, really, some folks say this!]
Claims unconference means that you get to choose which sessions you want to attend isn’t an unconference. [Don’t believe me? That’s how Google defines its annual Search Central unconference! <sigh>]

When attendees have a poor experience at what I call “ununconferences” that they’ve been told and believe are unconferences, naturally they will conclude that unconferences are nothing special.

2—Poor unconference design

Half a century ago, as a lowly graduate student, I attended tons of traditional academic conferences. And I hated them.

Many people have the same experience. So it’s understandable that when they have the desire or opportunity to create a conference themselves, they decide that they will open up the choice of program sessions to the attendees. They will hold an unconference!

The problem is that they often have no experience of what’s needed to create a good unconference. The tendency is to assume that because you’re rejecting the rigid format of traditional conferences, you can get away with less structure.

In reality, unconferences require a fair amount of structure. And it needs to be the right structure. For example, figuring out what attendees actually want and need to talk about doesn’t happen at the drop of a hat. Introducing attendees to each other and then facilitating connection around relevant content is an art, not a science. Closing sessions that meet personal and group wants and needs are often absent.

Because many so-called unconferences suffer from non-existent or poor design and/or facilitation they often turn out to be chaotic and unsatisfying. Such attendee experiences further reinforce the myth that unconferences are no big deal.

3—Overlooking the space needs of unconferences

Novices who try to hold unconferences invariably underestimate venue space needs. Compared to traditional conferences with the same number of participants, unconferences need larger general session rooms, because participants need to move about and meet in small groups, rather than sitting in fixed dense sets of tables and chairs. They also need more separate breakout spaces for participants to meet. Venue room capacity charts don’t include these designs. The result is that novice-organized unconferences rarely have the venue space they need to work well.

The solution to this is to design your unconference before choosing the venue. When this doesn’t happen (sadly, most of the time in my experience) the conference design, no matter how good it is, suffers.

4—Non-existent or insufficient pre-unconference attendee preparation

Unconferences are fundamentally different from broadcast-style meetings. Unconferences are led by participants, while traditional meetings are led by presenters. For an unconference to be successful, attendees need pre-event preparation. This is not a big deal, but it needs to be done. Conveners of well-designed unconferences explain, in general terms via pre-event communications what the unconference will be like and how to prepare for it.

One way to introduce conference newbies to a recurring unconference is to use a buddy system. Pairing returning participants with newbies and having the pairs get in touch with each other before the event is an excellent way to prepare folks who haven’t experienced an unconference before.

5—Assuming that “unconference” is synonymous with “Open Space”

Open Space is the most well-known unconference format. For many who plan an unconference, it’s the only format they’re aware of.

Don’t get me wrong. Open Space is an excellent format for short unconferences, and I’ve used it frequently myself. But it is not the only format available and is often not the best choice. I’ve written about this in my books; here’s a short critique of Open Space. In a sentence, Open Space provides little opportunity for participants to discover important peers, privileges extroverts, may not meet the actual wants and needs of participants, and uses a rather crude closing process.

A well-facilitated Open Space unconference is often an improvement over holding a traditional meeting with the same participants. But it is far from the only format that organizers can and should use.

6—The “unconference track” trap

Some event stakeholders make the well-intentioned but disastrous mistake of adding an unconference track to their traditional conference.

It’s the biggest unconference mistake you can make.

Most attendees don’t know what an unconference is or have had a bad experience at a poorly designed event. The result is that very few people will attend an unconference track. The event organizers notice the poor attendance, decide that providing an unconference “option” is not needed, and go back to a fully traditional conference format at subsequent events.

Well-designed unconferences are alive and well

People are holding well-designed unconferences all the time. Very few are large or high-profile. The variety of organizations and communities that run them might surprise you. (For example, while writing this I heard about the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association unconference, about which they made an excellent video.)

IBTTA July 2023, Nashville unconference (click to watch)

To get a taste of what’s going on, I maintain a peer conference calendar that lists unconferences that I hear of or are told about. Check out my calendars of past and upcoming unconferences. And if you’re holding one, submit the details and I’ll happily add it to my calendar!

To conclude

When designed and executed well, unconferences tend to endure. The one that began my meeting design journey, has now been running (apart from a COVID hiatus) for 33 years.

If I can help you design and facilitate an unconference for your organization, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Do you have other suggestions as to why unconferences aren’t more popular? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Tags: Event design, logistics, open space, popular, unconferences, venues| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

How to design for powerful connection and learning at large meetings

Monday, July 9th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

How can we design for powerful connection and learning at large meetings?

Although you’d never guess it from reading meeting industry trade journals, most meetings are small meetings, and this is a good thing if you want effective and relevant connection and learning to take place.

Large meetings stroke owners’ and leaders’ egos, and can supply impressive spectacle. They are appropriate places to launch campaigns and mass announcements and can be very profitable. However, they are poor vehicles for creating the useful participant learning, connection, and outcomes that well-designed small conferences can deliver.

So if you are (un)fortunate enough to be the owner or designer of a large meeting, what can you do to maximize participant value?

You need to satisfy four core requirements for optimum learning and connection:

Provide sessions focused on content that participants care about.
Design for small sessions and/or have participants work together in small groups.
Use interactive formats.
Include closing sessions that consolidate learning, build community, and explore the group’s future.

Let’s take a look at each of these requirements in more detail.

Content that participants care about

Traditional large conferences use the “kitchen sink” {aka “spray and pray”} approach of stuffing sessions on every potentially interesting topic into the program. Slightly more sophisticated conferences attempt to determine in advance the topics that attendees say they want.

Unfortunately, years of research by yours truly has shown that when conference sessions are chosen in advance, the majority of them are not what attendees want and need {here’s an example}. It’s like John Wanamaker describing advertising: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

There’s no way to know in advance which sessions you’ve prescheduled will meet participants’ wants and needs.

To be sure of scheduling sessions about content that participants actually care about, you’ll need to uncover and satisfy their actual wants and needs at the event. Luckily, doing this isn’t rocket science — I’ve been crowdsourcing programs in many different ways for 33 years.

Want to learn more? My 2009 book Conferences That Work describes one way to create an entirely crowdsourced multi-day conference. Here’s another way to do it for a one-day conference. If you have only a few hours Open Space is useful (though, in my opinion, overrated). Finally, check out my latest book Event Crowdsourcing which covers everything I’ve learned about crowdsourcing programs at meetings.

Small sessions and/or small group work

One of the reasons why small conferences with a well-defined niche audience work well is that participants don’t have to waste time meeting people with whom they have little in common. Large meetings attempt to create the same environment by scheduling multiple conference tracks and concurrent breakout sessions. Often, however, the resulting sessions are still too large for people to easily make useful connections and/or learn from each other.

Unless you use interactive formats (see below), not much useful learning can happen in an hour with a hundred attendees.

One simple approach to reduce the size of large sessions is to run them simultaneously in several rooms. Or you can repeat them at different times. Distribute interested participants between multiple sessions, either by preallocation (for simultaneous sessions) or personal choice. I use this approach to run The Three Questions as an opening plenary at large conferences.

Small sessions, with thirty or fewer participants, should be the goal. Such sizes invite less formal formats where it’s easier for participants to ask questions, influence what is covered and discussed, and contribute their expertise and experience to the learning environment.

Finally, large sessions can work effectively if they have a significant small group work component. For example, some of the session formats I design and facilitate — for example, The Solution Room, RSQP, and The Personal Introspective — scale to work with any number of participants because most of the important work is done in small groups.

Remember, small is beautiful!

Interactive formats

Designing genuinely useful sessions for large groups is challenging work and typically requires incorporating small group work as described above. However, I have had great success facilitating highly interactive discussions of “hot topics” with hundreds of people. By interactive, I don’t mean that five people monopolize the entire discussion. Typically about forty people are “up on stage” at some point, most of whom had no inkling beforehand that they had something useful to contribute.

I call the format I’ve developed the Fishbowl Sandwich, and you’ll find full details on how to design and prepare such a session in Event Crowdsourcing.

Closing sessions

Most meetings squander the experiences they create. How? By failing to provide structured time to consolidate and reflect on individual and group learning and explore consequent future change. You can improve all meetings by including closing sessions that:

Help participants consolidate what they’ve learned during the conference and determine the next steps; and
Provide an opportunity for participants to reflect on the event, build community, and uncover new opportunities for future activities together.

Luckily, formats that satisfy these important needs — The Personal Introspective and Group Spective — can be run for meetings of any size.

Include them!

Final thoughts

Designing for connection and learning at large meetings by incorporating sessions like the ones I’ve outlined above? Bear in mind that interactive sessions typically require more time than traditional lecture-style presentations. Active learning is messy and risky, and creating an effective and safe learning environment takes more time than simply listening to or viewing speaker content.

About to schedule crowdsourcing, interactive formats, and closing sessions? Investigate the amount of time they’ll need, so you don’t sabotage them by cramming them into a timeslot that can’t do them justice. The links above are good resources. Investigate them, apply their principles, and make your large conferences better!

Tags: care, closing sessions, connection, core requirements, crowdsourcing, group spective, interactive formats, large meetings, Learning, open space, outcomes, personal introspective, small group work, small is beautiful, small meetings| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Passive Programs Past Prime

Monday, August 18th, 2014 by Adrian Segar

Passive programs are past their prime.

“Part of the art of making change happen is seeing which cultural tropes are past their prime and having the guts to invent new ones.”
—Seth Godin, Skinny, sad and pale

It took hundreds of years before standard medieval medical practices like blood-letting, exorcism of devils, spells, incantations, and the proscription of bathing were replaced by modern medicine.

Conference programming consisting of one person lecturing at many has been our standard meeting model for hundreds of years. One day I think we will look back on this tradition. And we’ll marvel at how we could believe that it was the best thing to do at meetings.

A fundamental flaw

The fundamental flaw of traditional meetings is that most of the time only one person—the lecturer—is active while everyone else passively listens. Everyone who’s ever taught a class knows that the best way to learn anything is to teach it. But we rarely use participatory session formats where everyone gets to “teach” their understanding, questions, and points of view—and, as a bonus, gets to meet and connect with other participants with whom they share common interests.

Passive programs are past their prime. I think most people don’t use participatory session formats because they aren’t aware of them. Even when they are, they don’t know how to use them effectively and/or are scared of doing something perceived as “different”. Luckily, an increasing number of people have the guts to create and use powerful processes (e.g. World Café, Open Space, Art of Hosting, and, yes, Conferences That Work) that incorporate what we now know about how people effectively learn, connect, engage, and come to action.

All the above meeting formats are about twenty years old (although they all build on much older informal process). We now possess tools to make fundamental meeting change happen.

My professional life mission is to promote awareness of such tools, work on improving them, and encourage and support their increasing use. Join me and a growing number of others in our mission to fundamentally enhance the quality and value of meetings, one meeting at a time.

This is another post in the occasional series How do you facilitate change? where we explore various aspects of facilitating individual and group change.

Photo attribution: Flickr user otacke

Tags: art of hosting, lecture, mission, open space, passive, tropes, World Cafe| Posted in Facilitating Change | No Comments »

Dear Adrian: Answers to participant-led event questions asked at a MeetingsNet webinar

Monday, February 10th, 2014 by Adrian Segar

Curtiss Reed and I enjoyed presenting our thirty-minute MeetingsNet webinar Participant-Led Meetings: A Case Study on February 4, 2014, and I’m happy to announce that the webinar is now available free on demand (until February 4, 2015). Just go to the registration link and complete the short sign-up to receive a link to the webinar. We received many good participant-led event questions and were not able to answer them all in the time available. So I’ve listed them here, together with my answers. I hope you find them useful!

Angie Patel

Do you find most participants are organically prepared to participate in the peer sessions? Or do some come with data, slides, etc.?

At Conferences That Work, people are willing and able to participate in peer sessions by the time they begin. (Typically, this is the morning of the second day.) The combination of the ground rules, roundtable experience, and peer session sign-up transform the vast majority of attendees into participants.

How to prepare attendees for the possibility that they may have given a relevant presentation previously or have resource materials that might be relevant to the conference? We send out pre-conference information—a couple of weeks before the meeting—that includes language similar to the following:

“Have you worked on something that may be of interest to other attendees? Do you have experience or expertise in a given area or topic? Then, we encourage you to bring any useful supporting or presentation materials or links to the conference. All sessions are informal, so you don’t need to bring or prepare anything polished for distribution.”

Tara Taylor & Alethea Session

How do I find out if and where there might be opportunities to observe/attend participant-led events? How do you find these events?

For Conferences That Work format events, check out my events calendar, which lists events I’ve heard about that use the Conferences That Work format, or elements of it. (Unfortunately, many are unlisted because I don’t know about them. If you’re running one, please let me know and I’ll list it for free!) You can also fill out my training opportunities form, which allows me to inform you of events that you may be able to staff.

For other participant-led event formats, check out the relevant links in the resource document I provided for the webinar.

Elizabeth Campbell & Chris Kirchner

If you have a meeting that has to be more structured (due to regulations, like continuing medical education) can you do a hybrid? If so, what elements can you successfully integrate? Is a “hybrid” approach worth discussing? Example: Day 1 pre-planned agenda, Day 2 – participant-led content?

You can hold a hybrid event incorporating participant-led and traditional sessions, provided you have enough time to do both well.

I don’t know how to include traditional elements into a 1½ day Conferences That Work without unduly rushing the participant-led components. But if I have two or more days, it’s easy to integrate a keynote/plenary/trade show.

The edACCESS annual conference I’ve been running for 22 years lasts 3½ days and uses the Conferences That Work format. It includes a trade show, one or two preplanned plenaries, and sometimes a keynote. Peer sessions fill the rest of the time.

Incorporating such traditional elements can also help with marketing. People see the program and say, “Well, I don’t really understand this participant-led stuff. But so-and-so is going to be speaking, and there’s a session on such-and-such, so I’ll sign up.” Invariably, they end up evaluating the peer sessions higher than the traditional ones, but that’s OK; the latter helped them make the decision to attend.

One more point: on the order in which these two kinds of sessions are presented. It’s best to blend both formats, participant-led & traditional, into a single conference rather than separating them into a traditional day and a participant-led day. That way, people get exposed to both approaches and come to appreciate the latter. Otherwise, some people will avoid it because they aren’t familiar with its benefits.

Doreen Ashton Wagner

I’m curious: what if the sign-up-to-sessions process means that one or a few participants don’t find anything that appeals to them? That’s where I’ve been disappointed with Open Space formats in the past…I didn’t share the concerns of others!

Yes, Open Space, which has a minimalist structure, can suffer from its opening format. That’s because people are asked with little or no preparation to suggest topics they want to be discussed. Without easing attendees into a participant mindset—as happens during the first half-day of Conferences That Work—attendees may only hear topics from the more extrovert attendees, leading to the others ultimately feeling unrepresented. By the time the peer session sign-up occurs during Conferences That Work, nearly everyone is comfortable sharing the topics in which they are interested. If you’ve shared your own topics — i.e. you participate 🙂 — other attendees will see your interests. Subsequently, it’s rare that absolutely no one else is interested in every topic that any one person suggests.

Lee Pucker

How do you get companies to pay for people to attend without publishing a defined agenda that they can use to prove the ROI for the company?

I hope Curtiss gave you a useful answer from a client’s viewpoint during the webinar. There’s no question that until participant-led events become more mainstream it’s hard to start participant-led events from scratch when there’s no one yet available to testify to a specific event’s benefits. The capability to form more and better connections that these formats allow is probably the most concrete outcome for someone who needs to justify on an ROI basis. “I’m likely to make three times as many better quality connections at this event than at a traditional conference. That’s three times as many better-qualified sales leads…” etc.

Amy Forgette

With the roomset being so radically different (room for 200 to accommodate 70 in a circle) …how do we get VENUES to take our programs?

I’ve found that the issue is less about getting venues to take our programs (venues are almost always eager for business) and more about finding venues that fit the space needs of participant-led events. You may need to look beyond standard hotel business meeting rooms and event spaces that focus mainly on special events. Interestingly, educational institutions often turn out to provide great venues for many of the events that I run. I’m a big fan of non-traditional venues. Also, there are an increasing number of commercial venues that are aware that these event formats are becoming more popular and have adapted or reconfigured their space to fit.

Chris Kirchner

Any best practices on pre-conference marketing without a published agenda?

I hope I was able to answer this question during the webinar. Here are some helpful articles:

Finally, Chapter 17 of my book covers this topic.

John Boyle

What makes a “well-run” event? Is it facilitators?

I think there are two important components:

1) An established participant-led format that has a good track record. Any of the formats covered in the webinar poll meet this definition, except sometimes events advertised as “unconferences” or “bar camps.” Why? Because such terminology is sometimes slapped onto “alternative” events without having a clear meeting design in place. People occasionally use such labels to describe events that turn out to be relatively unstructured, prone to hijacking by a vocal few, and unnecessarily chaotic.

2) What’s more important is the caliber and experience of the event facilitators. That’s not to say that someone with good facilitation skills can’t do a decent job running one of these formats the first time they try. But if there’s some perceived risk to holding the event, it’s worth working with people who have a track record of running successful participant-led events.

John Boyle

What is the ideal size for a participant-led event? Is it scalable? For instance, can you have events within events or concurrent events to serve a larger group?

My book covers events that have up to 100 attendees. For an answer that covers events larger than this, please download my free book supplement and check out Chapter 5.

Doreen Ashton Wagner

With crowdsourcing tools and online collaboration, couldn’t this exchange [of topics for the conference] be done, at least in part, ahead of the event?

This is one of the most common questions — and it’s a good one! For my answer, see “Does asking attendees in advance for program suggestions work?”

These were some great participant-led event questions! If you have more, please contact me.

Tags: event calendar, hybrid, open space, participant-led events, questions, ROI| Posted in Dear Adrian, Event design | No Comments »

A short critique of Open Space

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 by Adrian Segar

“Cool, even though it seems like he has reinvented Open Space.”
—Chris Corrigan comment about this blog

Here is a short critique of Open Space, probably the most well-known participant-driven meeting design. Devised by Harrison Owen around the same time as Conferences That Work and presented in his 1993 book Open Space Technology: A Users Guide, this simple approach has become a popular way for participants to choose and discuss topics during their time together.

However, I think that Open Space does not work well for many participants. This has been corroborated informally over the years by every facilitator that I’ve spoken to who has used it. Here’s why.

Open Space poorly serves introverts

Open Space session topics are determined by individuals who stand up in front of the entire group and announce their chosen topic. Generally, this is much easier for extroverts, who have few difficulties speaking to a group extemporaneously, than introverts who tend to shun such opportunities. The result is that introverts are largely silent during the opening process. The subsequent Open Space sessions tilt towards those proposed and often dominated by a comfortably vocal minority.

Since introverts make up ~25-50% of the population (higher in some industries, such as information technology), this is not good.

A facilitator told me recently about her experience at an Open Space conference she was running. The acknowledged expert on the conference topic was present. But he was so uncomfortable with the process that he hardly spoke during the entire event.

We know that introverts can bring much to the table (for example, there’s research that indicates that introverts do better on intelligence tests). Using a participant-driven process that favors extrovert participation is a disservice to everyone present, not just the introverts. In my opinion, it’s a significant shortcoming of Open Space.

How can we engage introverts at participant-driven events?

Being a recovering introvert (according to the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory these days, I am a weak extrovert, but I didn’t always test that way) has sensitized me to the needs of introverts at participant-driven events, and the Conferences That Work design contains numerous small features that largely level the playing field.

For example, creating a safe environment is vital for attendees to become participants at an event. Conferences That Work‘s six explicit ground rules provide a safe, confidential environment that makes it easier for introverts to share at an event.

Another example: I have participants answer The Three Questions and personal introspective questions alone, in writing before they share their answers. Asking for written responses allows introverts to do their reflective work internally, rather than externally as extroverts prefer.

One more important feature of Conferences That Work is that during the start of the event: a) everyone is invited, in turn, to share; and b) each person gets the same amount of time to speak. (Yes, I have a timekeeper present.) This prevents extroverts from monopolizing group time, and models that sharing by all is an integral part of the event.

Conferences That Work is not Open Space!

Although Open Space and Conferences That Work are both participant-driven designs, there are significant differences between them. Perhaps the biggest advantage of Open Space is that you can use it when you don’t have much time; a few hours are often enough to do useful work. For events lasting one-and-half days or longer, however, I believe that the additional structure of Conferences That Work creates a more intimate, powerful, and useful experience for participants. Including introverts!

Photo attribution: Flickr user arvindgrover

Tags: extrovert, introvert, open space| Posted in Event design | 1 Comment »

Two principles for designing conference ground rules

Monday, June 6th, 2011 by Adrian Segar

I’ve written before about how to improve your conference with explicit ground rules. Though it’s interesting and enlightening to compare the ground rules embedded in conference designs—for example, Open Space Technology has five ground rules, while Conferences That Work and World Café have six—I won’t do that today. Instead, I want to share two principles for designing conference ground rules.

Ground rules should increase participants’ freedom, not restrict it

“Don’t speak unless the teacher asks you a question.”
“Pay attention!”
“Don’t chew gum in class.”

We’re used to rules like these that restrict our actions and reduce our freedom. But, surprisingly, it’s quite possible to create ground rules that increase our freedom at an event. Here are some examples:

Whenever it starts is the right time.—Open Space Technology
You have the freedom to ask about anything puzzling.—Conferences That Work
Make collective knowledge visible.—World Café

Each of these is a rule that gives permission for participants to act in a way that does not generally occur at traditional meetings. By explicitly giving permission for activities that normally are not associated with Conference 1.0 events, we increase participants’ freedom.

Make ground rules measurable

“Listen to others.”
“Be respectful.”
“Treat people politely.”

Rules like these are superficially appealing, but they aren’t effective because they rely on unmeasurable assumptions. How can we determine whether a participant is listening, respectful, or polite? We can’t, and this can lead to unproductive, time-consuming, and ultimately unresolvable disagreements during an event.

In contrast, here are examples of ground rules that are measurable and thus far less likely to lead to disagreement and subsequent conflict.

“Don’t interrupt.”
“Stay on time.”
“Keep what happens in each session confidential, unless everyone agrees otherwise.”

How were these principles for designing conference ground rules derived?

It would be nice to be able to claim that I first conceived these meta-rules for ground rule design and then used them to build my conference ground rules. No such luck! It took me ten years to realize that explicit ground rules for Conferences That Work would be useful, and another five to figure out the six I now use. Only recently did I notice that all six follow the two principles I’ve described above.

What ground rules do you use for your events? Can you share any other principles for designing conference ground rules?

Tags: freedom, ground rules, measurability, open space, World Cafe| Posted in Event design | 2 Comments »

Demystifying the unconference

Friday, January 14th, 2011 by Adrian Segar

It’s time to demystify the unconference.

Nine hundred years ago, when the world’s first universities began and prestigious libraries might contain a few hundred hand-copied books, the way you learned something was to travel to where a man (in those days it was always a man) knew it, and sit and listen to him teach it to you.

This model for learning sank deep into our culture. Today, on a computer we can hold in our hands, we can search the internet for information or watch videos of the finest presenters. Yet, even though we have amazing content at our fingertips, our meeting designs have not changed much from the classroom model required by the technologies available during the Middle Ages.

Over the last forty years, new face-to-face meeting designs—such as Open Space, World Café, Conferences That Work, Future Search, and Everyday Democracy—have appeared that challenge the entrenched dominant learning paradigm of passive reception of predetermined information. Although each design has unique features and goals, what they all have in common is that what happens at the event is participant-driven, rather than being largely prescribed by the conference organizers. Such formats are unconferences.

Here are some of the key features of an unconference

You can design them to work on a group problem or goal. Or as a time for individualized learning and sharing. Longer events can also include traditional sessions, keynotes, etc.
Meaningful and useful interaction between attendees is center stage, rather than something that happens in the breaks between sessions.
The culture is participatory, not passive. This has a highly positive effect on the environment, outcomes, and community created at the event.
Learning happens in small groups, rather than in large general sessions.
Teaching and learning aren’t fixed roles; a teacher at one moment may be a learner the next.
Unconferences harness the experience and expertise of the participants, rather than relying on the contributions of a few outside experts.
Participants have more input into and control over their learning and takeaways from an unconference. The event is, therefore, more likely to satisfy their wants and needs.
Interesting, unexpected things are likely to happen. While traditional conferences discourage risky learning, unconferences create an environment where participants can create sessions on the spot. Unconferences welcome questions and encourage sharing.

Why unconferences?

It’s no coincidence that unconference designs appeared as our society responded to the increased availability of information and ease of sharing made possible by the personal computer and the internet. And yet, despite the pervasive reality of ubiquitous knowledge and connectivity, professional event planners still rarely use these new designs.

One reason is the fear that an unconference just won’t work. I’ve run unconferences for twenty years and reviewed thousands of evaluations. I can assure you that the level of satisfaction with unconference formats is much higher than traditional events. (One of the reasons for this is that I’ve found that traditional program committees predict less than half the sessions that attendees actually want.) Other reasons include the misconception that crowdsourcing session topics before an event make it an unconference, the understandable fear of giving up control over one’s event, and general unfamiliarity with unconference revenue models, facilitation requirements, and logistical considerations.

All these barriers to the implementation of unconference meeting designs are readily overcome with education and experience. Most event planners (and their clients) have begun to hear the rumbles of dissatisfaction from attendees who are no longer satisfied flying hundreds of miles to listen to speakers they could have watched on YouTube, or to attend a conference where a majority of the sessions are not what they really wanted. Instead, these attendees are increasingly demanding meetings that concentrate on what only face-to-face events can provide—like Howard Givner’s experience of an unconference:

“…one of the most innovative and eye-opening professional experiences I’ve had. Aside from coming back with lots of new tips and ideas, I easily established triple the number of new contacts, and formed stronger relationships with them, than at any other conference I’ve been to.”

It’s time to demystify the unconference. We know how to create these events. Clients are asking for them. So, if you haven’t already, attend an unconference and experience a participant-driven event firsthand. Or talk to people who have. Then you’ll be ready to demystify unconferences and begin to build unconference designs into your event planning future.

This article was first published in Lara McCulloch-Carter‘s free eBook What’s Next in Events 2011.

Photo attribution: Flickr user stuckincustoms

Tags: control, Event design, Everyday Democracy, Future Search, open space, unconferences, World Cafe| Posted in Event design | 1 Comment »