Unconference

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An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants, generally day-by-day during the course of the event, rather than by a single organizer, or small group of organizers, in advance. To date, the term is primarily in use in the geek community. Unconference processes like Open Space Technology, however, have been around for over 20 years in other contexts.

Open Space Technology is an energizing and emergent way to organize an agenda for a conference. Those coming to the event can post on a wiki ahead of time topics they want to present about or hope others will present about. The wiki can also be used to share who is coming because it is the attendees who have a passion to share that contribute to the event and will make it great.

Penguin Day, started in 2004, is an unconference produced by Aspiration Tech to help non-profits connect to the Free and Open Source Software Community.

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[edit] History

The term unconference first appeared amongst techies in an announcement for the annual XML developers conference in 1998. More recently the term was used by Lenn Pryor when discussing BloggerCon and was popularized by Dave Winer, the organizer of BloggerCon, in an April 2004 writeup. Winer's unconference is a discussion leader with a topic moving a microphone amongst a large audience of 50 to 200 people.

[edit] Method

The event starts with an introduction by the organizers re-articulating the purpose of the event, the guidelines for conduct during the day and parameters.

Parameters explain the start and end time of the event, duration of the sessions, breaks for food if any, rules for accessing the network and any other parameters that the organizers may wish to be followed. The principles of Open Space and Law of Two Feet are often put forward as guide posts for participants.

The opening may also include time for attendees to introduce themselves and orient to the whole group. Participants are invited to write their name and session topic on a large piece of paper (A4 or 8.5x11). They announce the title of their session to the whole room and then post it on a schedule on the wall. Once all the sessions have been posted, the participants can look at the schedule wall. The schedule can be adjusted by those leading the sessions.

The event then gets underway as participants conduct their sessions at the scheduled time and attend sessions given by others.

[edit] Participation Processes

An unconference can use a number of different participation processes through which discussion and participation can be conducted. Some of these are

There are parallels with science-fiction fandom, in which a low-key convention with less structure, not focusing on professionals and guests of honor, is called a Relaxacon.

[edit] Related Events

O'Reilly's FOO Camp--started in 2003--is often termed an unconference, but its structure departs in several crucial aspects from the original definitions of the term. The most visible departure is that it's an invite-only event. Tim O'Reilly outlines the invitation process at [1].

Foo Camp uses a process derived from Open Space Technology but does not actually use the Open Space method to make the schedule. At Foo camp a whiteboard with times and spaces is put up and participants write their session topics on it. Foo Camp has been widely imitated, with BarCamp, PodCamp, Seattle MindCamp, and Disney's Pooh Camp as four direct spinoffs.

Om Malik described some of the controversy surrounding Foo Camp in 2005 in [2].

[edit] External links

[edit] Examples

[edit] Media Coverage

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