The Future Of Conferences Is Unconferences

Header of academic paper: The Future Of Conferences Is Unconferences: Exploring a Decentralized Network of Regional Meetups FORUM | MEANINGFUL DESIGN PROCESSES This forum is dedicated to exploring the notion of meaningfulness in design processes, taking the perspectives of community groups, nongovernmental organizations, and those who are marginalized in society as starting points. Authors will reflect conceptually and methodologically on practical engagements. — Rosanna Bellini and Angelika Strohmayer, Editors Soya Park, MIT, Eun-Jeong Kang, Cornell University, Karen Joy, Rutgers University, Rosanna Bellini, Cornell University, Jérémie Lumbroso, University of Pennsylvania, Danaé Metaxa, University of Pennsylvania, Andrés Monroy-Hernandez, Princeton University Meetings and conferences are perhaps one of the most important fundamental ways in which people come together and change happens. Yet this topic is rarely the focus of much academic study. So I’m pleased to discover an academic research article paper about unconference — especially since its title is: The Future Of Conferences Is Unconferences! The paper appears in the October 2023 issue of the venerable Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Interactions journal. ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society.

Now, I’m not a fan of the term “unconference” because:

Nevertheless, I’m happy that at least some in academia see the value of participant-driven and participation-rich conferences.

Here’s a summary of the paper [read and/or download the full paper here].

The Future Of Conferences Is Unconferences

The paper begins with a critique of traditional conferences that will be familiar to regular readers of this blog: one-sided communication, high costs, environmental impact, and time away from other obligations.

Consequently the authors propose a new model: locally grouped unconferences, that prioritize informal connections and participant-driven content over formal presentations, challenging the hierarchical structure of conventional conferences.

An unconference-style event for local researchers

To assess the feasibility of this model for academic research, a group of researchers in the northeastern U.S. organized an unconference-style Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) event for local researchers. This event was free to attend and focused on interactions between researchers, with an emphasis on dynamic and meaningful interactions.

This one-day event was restricted to 70 participants, and included World Café and three 45-minute panel sessions, each featuring four panelists presenting their research findings. The panel sessions received positive feedback, though some participants noted challenges in selecting panelists and finding relevant papers for discussion.

The World Café table topics and the panelists were chosen in advance, so this wasn’t really a true unconference. However, participants reported “unanimous satisfaction”, “making meaningful connections”, and “interest in attending future similar events”.

The key elements of the unconference program included socialization, dissemination, and event organization. Socialization activities, such as an icebreaker and World Cafe-style discussions, were highly appreciated by participants for promoting engagement. However, they were less effective at identifying collaboration opportunities. [The peer conferences I’ve been running since 1992 are far more effective in this regard.] Participants found the smaller size of the event and unstructured socializing to be conducive to meaningful connections.

Size and location

The authors say that the size and location of the event are crucial. A right-sized event allows for meaningful networking without overwhelming attendees. Participants expressed a willingness to travel to other locations, provided they were easily accessible. They proposed that regional meetups should occur between quarterly and biannually to provide more regular contact with researchers. They should complement official conferences rather than compete with them. The goal is to make conferences more accessible and enjoyable, especially for junior scholars and those with fewer resources.

Conclusions

In conclusion, the paper states that a decentralized regional meetup model offers a promising alternative to traditional academic conferences. Its cost-effectiveness, emphasis on interactions, and potential for more regular contact among researchers make it a valuable addition to the academic conference landscape.

The authors believe that the success of this local unconference model suggests it can mitigate the drawbacks of traditional conferences. To promote more local gatherings, organizers can leverage the lower cost and preparation time of such events. They can also create a portal for organizers to share their experiences and knowledge, enabling others to learn from their experiences.

The authors offer these key insights:

  • A localized unconference model for academic conferences can serve as a viable alternative to mitigate the inherent drawbacks of conventional conferences.
  • Key to the success of such regional meetups is lower friction of organizing.
  • Such regional meetups should focus more on interactions between researchers than the dissemination of knowledge.

—Soya Park, Eun-Jeong Kang, Karen Joy, Rosanna Bellini, Jérémie Lumbroso, Danaë Metaxa, Andrés Monroy-Hernández , The Future Of Conferences Is Unconferences

Doing peer conferences right

Participants gather at the 2022 SoCraTes peer conferenceSoftware testers do peer conferences right! (They even call them a peer conference, rather than unconference, a term I don’t like.) As evidence of software tester conference awesomeness, I offer three examples below. But first…

…a short history of the peer conference

I first designed and convened what I called a “peer conference” in 1992 for a group of IT managers at small schools that eventually became known as edACCESS.

During my 20+ years as an IT consultant and software developer, I got to know a delightful international crowd of software testers: those all-important people responsible for the impossible task of making sure that software works. After I talked about my meeting design work with pioneer tester James Bach at the 2004 Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, the testing community somehow adopted the term peer conference for their get-togethers.

My code development days are long gone. I miss hanging out with the folks I got to know at these events. (Though I’m still in touch with some of them.) Regardless, peer conferences in the world of software testing are still alive and thriving!

And now…

Three examples of how software testers do peer conferences right

1. The 2022 SoCraTes peer conference

Lisi Hocke wrote a long detailed post about her first-timer experience at the 2022 SoCraTes (Software Craft and Testing) peer conference held in Soltau, Germany.

For a quick visual impression of the event, watch this!


Here are some illustrative extracts from Lisi’s post.

Keeping participants safe

Feeling safe is an important psychological requirement for people in any situation, and conferences are no exception (1, 2, 3). Lisi shares another participant’s experience:

Providing a welcoming and supportive environment for first-time participants

SoCraTes 2022 included a Foundation Day “with fewer people and hence a smaller crowd to get used to. A day that covered fundamental topics without them being too basic, so I learned a lot even with topics I knew about. A day where we had a schedule set in advance, which took away the uncertainty of what would happen. A day to get to know people a bit already.”

Notice how this optional first day used more conventional session formats to make it easier for first-time attendees to integrate into the existing community.

“Over dinner, I realized I was not the only one joining this conference for the first time. Later on, we realized lots of people were new joiners indeed, based on recommendations they chose to give this conference a try. Was really great to see.

In the beginning, things were still a bit new, strange and even stiff; as it often is for me these days when suddenly seeing lots of people in real life. Within a short period of time I could loosen up, though. The more people I got to know, the more I relaxed and felt at ease.”

A participation-rich session format — World Café — was introduced at the end of Foundation Day

The World Café supplied an appropriate introduction and transition to the Open Space format used during the rest of the conference.

“To set the scene, a World Café was hosted by the wonderful Juke, getting all of us connected to SoCraTes and each other. How it worked? We had three rounds, a new question each round. For each group, one stays at the same place while all others look for a new group to join. The one who stays welcomes the new people and shares what the previous group had talked about. Usually this is supported by taking notes and drawing on flip charts or similar means.”

Open Space

SoCraTes 2022 used the participant-driven Open Space format to determine what sessions participants wanted to hold. Though Open Space is just one of the formats you can use to create participant-driven and participation-rich meetings, it’s probably the most well-known and is often an appropriate process to use.

“In short: we build the agenda we want to see! And that’s what happened. It’s fascinating how you can really trust in the system. The queues to briefly present the proposed topics were really long, and the emerging schedule looked amazing. So many awesome topics…”

Session leaders used a wide variety of participative formats

Check out Lisi’s post for descriptions of many appropriate innovative session formats, including ask me anything, brainstorming, blind ensemble programming, the pipeline game, exploring feelings while reading code, a Code Retreat, and a retrospective.

Some closing insights

About listening and learning…

“The entire conference felt like a version of the world that could exist. Many small and large customs help people to get along better with each other. It starts with the name tags alone: ​​take off the name tag if you’re too introverted to talk to people right now. A red tape means you don’t want to be photographed. The name tags are magnetic and hold the creative badges that people use to announce their pronouns – with a lot of artistic flair if you like.”
—Eric, SoCraTes 2022 — a conference report [translated from German]

Compare the innovation and excitement at SoCraTes 2022 with just about any other conference you’ve attended. Can you see why software testers like Lisi think that peer conferences rock?!

2. The Unexpo Experiment

Here’s another example from a software testing peer conference, TestBash Brighton 2018. The conference designers invented a way to create “highly engaging, interactive, and fun” poster sessions. Check out my post that describes this “excellent example of how to invent, explore, evaluate, and improve new meeting formats”.

3. A free guide to creating peer conferences

Want to create a peer conference, but don’t want to buy any of my excellent books on this topic? (Hey, you can buy all three for just $49.99, but that’s OK 😀.) No problem, the Association for Software Testing published an excellent free introductory guide to creating peer conferences. Learn more about it, and download it here.

Final thoughts

I love and respect the software testing community because its practitioners think carefully and seriously about how to design their conferences. And then they implement and test their innovative designs, discovering what works and what doesn’t while also being open to the joy and excitement of the unexpected. A beautiful mixture of serious exploration, learning, and fun.

That’s the way to improve meetings!

Image attribution: #SoCraTes2022 peer conference photo by Markus Tacker

The words we use for meetings matter

Words we use for meetings: an animated graphic showing competing words used in the meeting industry. Online versus virtual. Networking versus connection. Unconference versus peer conference.The words we use for meetings matter. Unfortunately, familiar terms often perpetuate conventional meeting thinking. By changing the words we use we can change how we think about events. Here are three examples of better words to use when talking about meetings.

online rather than virtual

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, in-person meetings vanished overnight. Suddenly Zoom became a household word. If we couldn’t safely meet face-to-face we’d sit in front of screens.

But what should we call these internet-mediated meetings?

In July 2020 I suggested that we not call them virtual meetings. Instead, I made the case to use the word online. In essence, I pointed out that virtual has the connotations of “not quite as good” and unreal, while online is a neutral and well-established description of the meeting medium. Read the post for a detailed argument.

Though I don’t claim any credit, I’m happy to observe that meeting industry professionals and trade journals currently tend to prefer “online meeting” to “virtual meeting”, though there are some notable exceptions. Google also shows the same preference, with 5.0B search results for “online meeting” versus 1.3B for “virtual meeting”.

connection rather than networking

This is a big one, and a harder switch to make. The word networking has been used so often to describe what people do at meetings that it’s tough to supplant. But describing everything that happens outside event sessions as networking subtly directs attention away from what can be the most valuable outcome of well-designed meetings: connecting with others.

We’ve biased how we talk about connection at meetings by using a word that is much more focused on personal and organizational advantage than personal and professional mutual benefits.

I lightheartedly titled my recent post on this topic “Stop networking at meetings“. But it’s a serious suggestion. Having a mindset of encouraging and supporting connection around useful content plus a set of meeting process tools that can make it happen is a game-changer for meeting effectiveness.

peer conference rather than unconference

Sadly, I’m a voice in the wilderness on this one. 13 years ago, I wrote Why I don’t like unconferences. As I explained in my first book, Conferences That Work, what people call an unconference is what a good conference should actually be. At unconferences, far more conferring goes on than at traditional events. I coined the term peer conference as an attempt to remove the “un” from “unconference”.

I was ignored.

This linguistic problem worsened as people decided that calling traditional events “unconferences” made them sound cool. They ignored the central feature of an unconference; that sessions are chosen at the event rather than scheduled in advance. These days I frequently see advance calls for speaker submissions at meetings advertised as “unconferences”! You even find traditional breakout sessions described as unconferences, presumably because more than one person might speak. I cover these depressing developments in These aren’t the unconferences you’re looking for.

Today, “peer conferencing” is principally used to describe an educational approach to writing in groups. So I’ve reluctantly given up trying to swim against the tide, and have been using the term unconference in my recent writing.

C’est la vie.

What do you think?

The words we use for meetings matter. My little campaigns to reframe some language the meeting industry uses have had mixed results. What do you think of my suggestions? Are there other examples of meeting industry language you’d like to see changed? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

P.S. Some meeting industry terms I like!

Apropos of nothing, here, in alphabetical order, are some meeting industry terms I like. Don’t ask me why.

  • Air wall
  • Banquet event order
  • Corkage
  • Drayage
  • Duty of care
  • Gobo
  • Pipe and drape
  • Rack rate
  • Stanchion

These aren’t the unconferences you’re looking for

Obi-Wan Kenobi in the famous Star Wars scene where he's stopped by Imperial stormtroopers on entering Mos Eisley and muddles their minds. The caption reads: "These aren't the unconferences you're looking for."
I’m noticing that event promoters increasingly use “unconference” to describe traditional conferences. Like this one, this one, and this one.

<Sigh>. Please stop doing this! There’s a big difference between unconferences and traditional events.

Here’s how Wikipedia defines an unconference:

“An unconference is a participant-driven meeting.”
“Typically at an unconference, the agenda is created by the attendees at the beginning of the meeting.
Unconference, Wikipedia

Well, surely titan Google would accurately describe their annual Search Central unconference?

Nope.
unconferencesIn case you can’t read that, it says:

“In particular, the word ‘unconference’ means that you get to choose which sessions you want to attend and actively participate in. You will shape the event by taking part in discussions, feedback sessions, and similar formats that need your input.”
The Search Central Unconference is back, Google Search Central Blog

Wow. According to Google, “‘unconference’ means that you get to choose which sessions you want to attend”. Umm, Google, that’s what happens at every conference! Oh, you also get to “actively participate in” sessions? Google, we call that “having a discussion” or “a breakout”.

Dave Smart’s blog post My experience of the Google Search Central unconference makes it clear that Google chose the entire conference program beforehand.

Abraham Lincoln once posed the question: “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does it have?” and then answered his own query: “Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.” Sorry, Google, but calling your conference an unconference doesn’t make it one.

Let’s call what you’re doing an ununconference.

Sadly, Google is not alone.

A few examples of ununconferences

Here are three ununconferences that people promoted this week. I noticed several others, but adding all those black bars to remove identifying information takes time. Twitter is full of folks who already know they’ll be “speaking” at an ununconference (e.g., the second example). The last example announces that their “unconference” is closing session proposal submissions six months before the actual event!
unconferences

Conference programs that are predetermined with attendee input are not unconferences

I have been convening and facilitating unconferences for 33 years. (I prefer the term peer conferences, but no one else cares.) Why? Because they provide a far better conference experience. Better, because creating the conference program in real-time at the start ensures that the event optimally meets participants’ in-the-moment wants and needs.

In 2010, I explained why asking attendees in advance for program suggestions doesn’t work. And a couple of years later, I shared why a program committee or the mythical “conference curator” doesn’t do any better:

“In my twenty years of organizing conferences, I’ve never found a program committee that predicted more than half of the session topics that conference attendees chose when they were given the choice. During that time I’ve seen no evidence that any one person, whether they are given the title of “curator” or not, can put together a conference program that can match what attendees actually need and want.
Jeremy Lin and the myth of the conference curator, February, 2012

Seth Godin puts it this way: “We have no idea in advance who the great contributors are going to be.” Just about every unconference I’ve convened or attended, has brought to light participants whose valuable knowledge, expertise, experience, and contributions were unknown to the conveners (and most, if not all, of the attendees). You can’t do this effectively at a traditional conference with a predetermined program.

Unconference is not a marketing soundbite

Marketers: Stop using “unconference” as an event marketing buzzword. We’re not selling cereal here. As Robert Kreitner says, “Buzzwords…drive out good ideas.” Unconferences are participant-driven, which involves building the program in real-time during the event. Having (well-designed) discussion sessions during an event is great, but that doesn’t make a meeting an unconference.

Meeting conveners: Learn about what unconferences actually are before calling your event one. (Any of my books will give you detailed information about these meeting formats, and how well they work.)

I care about how people use the word “unconference” because I’ve met too many folks who believe that an event billed as an unconference must be one. Then they attend and are underwhelmed. I’d hate to see unconferences suffer because marketing folks use the word as a way to make an event sound hip, sophisticated, and cool. Let’s banish the ununconference instead!

Are science conferences stuck in the Dark Ages?

Science Conferences Are Stuck in the Dark Ages: a black and white photograph of Albert Einstein lecturing to an audience
An article in Wired argues that “Science Conferences Are Stuck in the Dark Ages“. Unsurprisingly, I agree — but there’s some light in the darkness!

Here are some of the points scientists Esther Ngumbi and Brian Lovett make in the article. Many will be familiar to my readers:

“…for decades, whether in Basel or Bolivia, the room has been the same: four walls, a podium, and a projector.”

“Where’s the dialog? Where’s the questioning? Where’s the innovation?”

“And what about the dry format? Does the predominant stream of posters and lectures still benefit science? Why the deluge of printed posters when we are battling climate change? Why an onslaught of 10-minute presentations and only a few slots for a robust discussion?”

“…it is easy to accept the status quo, especially if there are no immediate consequences for not changing. Unlike teaching, where we have real consequences when we fail to modernize, such as poor evaluations and losing enrollment, there are no real consequences for the professional societies organizing the meetings or for presenting scientists.”

Science Conferences Are Stuck in the Dark Ages: painting A Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution; Sir James Dewar on Liquid Hydrogen, 1904 (oil on canvas)

A positive trend

After these tales of woe, Esther and Brian share a positive trend:

“The good news is that researchers, professional societies, and conference organizers are beginning to ponder on these questions.

The ‘unconference’ is one of the modern-day conferences that reflects a step in the right direction. In this format, delegates from diverse research fields set the agenda, not the conference organizers themselves. Also, because delegates set the agenda, everyone’s voice is included.”

As you probably know, I’ve been designing and facilitating unconferences for decades (though I prefer to call them peer conferences.) The key, but often unappreciated, strength of peer conferences is that the agenda is determined at the event rather than beforehand.

“Presentations of the future should include anonymous evaluations.”

I’m not sure how helpful this suggestion is, even though I suspect session evaluations are rare at science conferences. Most conferences these days include anonymous session evaluations. Unfortunately, such evaluations have very little (or even worse, misleading) impact on session selection at future events.

A vision for a better conference

“…a more perfect conference would look like this: …you arrive at a conference where everyone’s voice and ideas were included in determining the agenda. And because you feel included you are motivated to actively participate. The presentations are robust, interactive, and full of dialog. Time slots aren’t organized by scientist, but by scientific goals shared by interdisciplinary scientists. And because the presentation is interactive you come away from the presentation with new understanding of our momentum toward solving that societal problem.”

Over the years, I’ve designed successful conferences for many different kinds of organizations that incorporate all these desirable attributes. We know how to do this! Similar designs for academic conferences are less common, though I’ve consulted on the design and improvement of science conferences for clients like The Nature Conservancy and the American Heart Association.

Finally, the authors, suggest:

“Perhaps it’s time for a conference reimagining the conference format for the new decade.”

Well, Esther and Brian, my Participate! Labs are exactly what you’re asking for! I’m also a fan of the Meeting Design Practicum, an annual invitation-only European conference for meeting designers, which I’ve attended every year since it began in 2016.

Conclusion

Yes, most science conferences are stuck in the Dark Ages. The good news is that there’s plenty of light available if you know where to look. I hope that this blog and my books provide strong illumination, available to anyone who wants to improve their conferences.

[HT to Heidi Thorne who shared this article with me.]

How to use dot voting to choose the sessions your attendees need and want

A photograph of a smiling conference participant who, with others, is dot voting on session topics written on large sticky notes posted on a wallHow do we build conference programs that attendees actually want and need? Since 1992 I’ve experimented with multiple methods to ensure that every session is relevant and valuable. Here’s what happened when I incorporated dot voting into a recent two-day association peer conference.

For small (40 – 70 participants) one-day conferences I often use the large Post-it™ notes technique described in detail in my post How to crowdsource conference sessions in real-time. Participants simply post desired topics, which are then clustered and used to determine sessions and facilitators/leaders.

What we did

The September 2017 two-day conference had 160 participants, so I decided to add interest dot voting to obtain additional information about the relative popularity of topics. This added a couple of extra steps to the process used in the post above.

We had three one-hour time slots available the following day, and six separate rooms for participants to meet. This allowed us to schedule a maximum of eighteen peer sessions.

After twenty minutes obtaining topic offers and wants, a small group of volunteers clustered the~150 topics posted, combined them appropriately, and, when needed, rewrote session titles on a fresh Post-it. Participants then returned to dot vote on the cleaned-up topics.

Each participant received three colored dots, which they could assign to the topics however they wanted — including all three to a single topic if desired.

dot voting
Handing out dots for dot voting

In addition, we gave each participant a black fine-point Sharpie. They wrote a number between 1 and 3 on each of their dots to indicate their level of interest in the dotted session.
Here’s a 22-second video excerpt of the dot voting, which was open for 35 minutes during an evening reception.

Finally, the small volunteer group spent about ninety minutes using the peer session selection process described in my book Conferences That Work and associated supplement to create the conference program for the next day.

Observations

  • The entire process went very smoothly.
  • It became clear that there were fifteen topics with significant interest. So we ended up scheduling five simultaneous sessions in each time slot, leaving one room empty. We advertised the empty room as a place for impromptu meetings on other topics.
  • The ninety minutes needed to analyze the voting and create appropriate sessions compares favorably with the time needed for the more detailed process described in Conferences That Work.
  • I had expected that most people would choose “3 — High Interest” for their dots. Although a majority of the dots were indeed 3’s, there were a significant number of 1’s and 2’s. This was helpful for rejecting topics that had a number of dots with mostly “medium” or “low” interest. Without the interest level information, it would have been harder to pick the best topics to schedule.
  • Every one of the scheduled sessions had good attendance. In addition, we scheduled sessions that seemed to be more popular (many dots) in the larger rooms. This worked out well.
  • Although at the time of writing, session evaluations are not yet available, the conference closing Group Spective made it clear that participants were very happy with the program they had created.

Conclusions

I was pleased with how well adding dot voting to Post-it topic selection worked. It’s a simple tool that provides useful information on participants’ session preferences. This approach fits nicely between the most basic crowdsourcing methods, like Post-it topic choice, and the more information-rich approach used for classic Conferences That Work peer conferences.

I expect to use the technique again!

Have you used sticky notes and/or dot voting to crowdsource sessions at your events? Share your experience in the comments below! 

How to crowdsource a conference program in real-time

Here’s a real-life example of how to crowdsource a conference program in real time.

In May 2017 Liz Lathan and Nicole Osibodu invited me to design and facilitate the session crowdsourcing at the first Haute Dokimazo unconference in Austin, Texas. Eighty invited participants from around the U.S. spent a joyful and productive day at the Austin Children’s Museum’s Thinkery where we crowdsourced a program focusing on event portfolio needs and wants of brands and agencies.

Watch this three-minute video for a taste of the event — then read on to learn how we crowdsourced the program.

Pre-crowdsourcing work

Every peer conference has an arc that includes and integrates three elements: a beginning, a middle (the program itself), and an end (reflecting, evaluating, and developing individual and group outcomes & next steps). The beginning is when crowdsourcing takes place. Before crowdsourcing it’s critical that participants get to learn about each other as much as possible in the time available. The best way I know to support initial inter-participant learning and connection is The Three Questions process I devised in 1995 (see my books for full details).

After quickly introducing and having the group commit to six agreements to follow at the event, we had forty-five minutes available for The Three Questions. To ensure each person had time to share, we split the participants into four equal-sized groups. Facilitators, trained the previous evening, led each group.

Once group members had learned about each other, we reconvened to crowdsource the afternoon program.

How we crowdsourced the Haute Dokimazo program

Crowdsourcing took just 25 minutes. Participants used large colored Post-it™ notes to submit session topics. We used pink notes for offers to facilitate or lead a session, and other colors for wants, as explained in the diagram below.
crowdsource a conference program
We read the topics aloud as they came in. Once we had everyone’s responses, the participants left for their morning workshops. Meanwhile, Liz Lathan and I moved the note collection to a quiet space, clustered them…
crowdsource a conference program
…and worked out what we were going to run, who would facilitate or lead each session, and where it would be held.

The resulting sessions

During lunch, we checked that the session leaders we’d chosen were willing and available for the schedule we’d created. Finally, we created a slide of the resulting sessions. We added it to the conference app and projected the afternoon program on a screen during lunch.

This is just one way to crowdsource a conference program in real time. Want a comprehensive resource on creating conference programs that become what your attendees actually want and need? My book Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need contains everything you need to know. Learn more here!

Ground rules at the Lost Levels unconference

A brightly-colored ground rules wall poster at the lost levels conference. It says: "FRIENDLY REMINDERS MAKE SPACE FOR OTHERS. WATCH OUT FOR BLOCKING VIEWS BE AN ACTIVE LISTENER ALSO YOU ARE AMAZING!"Ground rules? We don’t need ’em!

Yes, you do!

“Game makers find inspiration at Lost Levels, an intimate and involving gathering where anything seems possible”
Laura Hudson, The radical games event where the next speaker is you

The Lost Levels four-hour gaming unconference incorporates these agreements:

  • Make space for others!
  • Watch out for blocking views
  • Be an active listener
  • (and indirectly) Be amazing!

Don’t feel you need to use the Lost Levels agreements at your event. You should tailor ground rules (aka agreements or covenants) to fit meeting needs.  But there’s something to be said for incorporating Lost Levels’ agreements into your events.

Image attribution: Laura Hudson, boingboing

The biggest unconference mistake you can make

biggest unconference mistake: a screenshot of a computer software dialog box with the title "Warning" and the text "Proceeding with the operation 'Delete' will erase the contents of your hard drive. What do you wish to do?"
Two option buttons are provided: "Proceed" and "Delete", and the dialog close box is greyed out.
What’s the biggest unconference mistake you can make?

Sometimes, good intentions pave the road to hell.

A conversation I dread

CONFERENCE ORGANIZER: “Hey, Adrian, we’re incorporating participant-led sessions into our conference this year!”

ADRIAN: “That’s great! What are you going to do?”

CONFERENCE ORGANIZER: “Well, some program committee members are skeptical that this format will work, so we’re going to add an unconference track that people can attend if interested.”

ADRIAN: Nooooooo! Don’t do that!

I’ve had more than one conversation like this. Here’s why adding an unconference track to a conventional conference program is a big mistake. (Probably, the biggest unconference mistake you can make.)

Why you shouldn’t add an unconference track to a traditional conference

Consider these three points:

  • To date, relatively few people have experienced a unconference session (one shaped on the spot by the needs, experience, and expertise of the people present);
  • Lecture-style formats comprise the vast majority of people’s formal learning experiences. So, if you haven’t previously experienced an unconference session you’re probably skeptical that it’ll be useful to you; and
  • We are creatures of habit, and most of us are cautious about trying something new.

When you combine these observations, the unfortunate outcome is that very few people will attend an unconference track. Most attendees will stick to the conventional and “safe” concurrent sessions on pre-announced topics.

I was a skeptic myself when I started using participant-led formats back in 1992. A number of years passed before I stopped worrying whether this new-fangled way of running events would work for the next group I tried it with. It turns out that when a participant-led session or sessions are the only conference activities going on, people dive in and nearly everyone likes what occurs. But when you give people a choice between what’s familiar and what’s not, all but the bravest take the safer path.

I’ve made the unconference track mistake. I’ve stood in a room set for three hundred attendees and had thirty show up, while four other concurrent sessions siphoned off 1,400 people. Yes, those thirty participants had an amazing time. But the overall perception of the vast majority who didn’t attend (and the conference organizers) was that participant-led formats were “not really wanted” and could be safely ignored.

Don’t make this mistake!

So how do we avoid making this mistake? Make participant-led sessions plenaries or simultaneous breakouts. You certainly don’t have to make unconference sessions 100% of your conference, but there should be no other type of conference activity going on at the same time.

There will probably always be conference organizers who are skeptical that participant-led sessions can work. A compromise may appear to be the way to keep such people happy, but it will invariably create a self-fulfilling prophecy; the “experimental” track will be poorly attended and the skeptics will say, “I told you so”.

We all get tripped up from time to time by the unintended consequences of our good intentions. When planning to add participant-led sessions to your next event, resist the alluring compromise of an unconference track. Instead, dedicate a morning, afternoon, day, or days to well-designed participant-led sessions. Then you’ll see just how well these still-novel but increasingly popular formats can work.

Drive-by experts at your conference

experts conference: photograph of a "drive-by" fast food restaurant with customers' motorbikes parked inside. Photo attribution: Flickr user jannem

Want to discover the experts at your conference?

“It’s been clear from the beginning of the Web that it gives us access to experts on topics we never even thought of. As the Web has become more social, and as conversations have become scaled up, these crazy-smart experts are no longer nestling at home. They’re showing up like genies summoned by the incantation of particular words. We see this at Twitter, Reddit, and other sites with large populations and open-circle conversations. This is a great thing, especially if the conversational space is engineered to give prominence to the contributions of drive-by experts. We want to take advantage of the fact that if enough people are in a conversation, one of them will be an expert.
—David Weinberger, Globalization of local experience

This is exactly why the Conferences That Work format works so well. Peer conferences allow participants to discover the conference experts in (what was formerly known as) the “audience” they want to meet, connect with, and learn from. Instead of restricting teachers to the few folks at the front of the room, peer conferences allow us to tap the experience and expertise of anyone that’s present.
In other words, Conferences That Work extend the effectiveness of the online conversations that David describes above to face-to-face meetings.

Photo attribution: Flickr user jannem