Written by We’ve all been there. Dull conferences, where row upon row of plastic seats face plastic speakers intent on reading their slides verbatim, turning their backs to the audience at intervals, inadvertently producing the effect of one of those old fashioned rotating Leslie speakers. We have to resort to minor forms of self harm just to stay awake.
Later, you might get to participate in a workshop discussion where everyone needs to qualify their attendance by announcing their job titles. This really helps people to filter out the little folk and ignore you, based on your insignificance in the hierarchy. Yawn.
It’s all an endurance test. Corporate psychological warfare.
Everybody is bored stiff but that’s how we do these things, right ?
Step aside, there’s a new kid in town. The UnConference wants to shake things up.
Unconference ??
If you told your boss you wanted to go to a conference where there was no agenda and you didn’t know who was going to be speaking, or even what specific topics would be covered, you might get some strange looks. Your request to attend might well be refused.
So what’s so amazing about an Unconference ?
On Tuesday April 19th 2011, I popped my Unconference cherry at a little gathering called ShropCamp. The overall focus of the day was “How can we use social media and open data to help service providers to work more effectively at a local level?”. After a charismatic introduction by organiser Ben Proctor, the equally dynamic Andy Mabbett took over to help us all collectively shape the agenda for the day. Any participant can run a workshop at an Unconference, and at Andy’s request, around a dozen people put themselves forward. Compared to a traditional conference, the next bit was rivetting.
One by one, each person made a thirty second pitch – timed with a stopwatch, no less.
Fast and punchy, and with such a flow of diverse ideas, we were hooked from the word go.
The workshop titles are then written up on post it notes and assembled onto a 4×3 grid. In a nutshell, it’s as simple as that. As an attendee, you check the grid to see which sessions you’re most interested in.
Clearly, the presenters of the workshops had come prepared, so there’s obviously a lot of planning and preparation involved. You couldn’t organise an Unconference without knowing that you had a bank of reliable people who would be willing to come and pitch.
The quality of the ShropCamp presentations and speakers was excellent, and the emphasis was on collaborative participation. This was about a group of people with a shared passion for improving services being open with each other to see what connections could be made.
Why does it work?
Like social media itself, the power behind an Unconference is that the best ideas and concepts rise to the top, not necessarily people or roles. Old hierarchies are flattened and everyone can contribute meaningfully. It’s precisely this self organising aspect which keeps everyone engaged and contributing. Like a flock of starlings, the group appear to have form and direction, yet no individual is steering. The flock could disperse at any time but something keeps them cohesive and on the fine line between chaos and order. There’s a lot of Systems Thinking and Complexity theory stuff been written about this kind of idea. I heard it described by @NoamKos at a recent event as the “Chaordic” principle – finding the perfect balance between order and chaos, to provide the most fertile ground for creativity and innovation. That’s what the Unconference does.
Everybody is in control, and nobody is in control.
We can all steer the flock.
More about ShropCamp…
This post has been mainly about the Unconference format itself. If you’d like to read more about ShropCamp, the best place to start would be http://shropcamp.tumblr.com.
Here are a few post event blogs from people who attended.
Paul Nash from Penval http://www.penval.co.uk/news/shropcamp-report
Jools Payne http://biscuitbunny1.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/shropcamp-beyond-brilliant/
Ben Proctor’s post-event analysis http://www.benproctor.co.uk/2011/04/shropcamp-how-it-was-for-me/
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