Remember years ago when Tomorrow’s World (BBC TV) told us how amazing the future would be, that we’d all have robot cleaners and loads more spare time because computers would handle everything for us? It all seemed, and still seems so far away. Computers have largely resulted in people spending a massive proportion of their time on computers.

I’m helping to organise a conference for the Local Safeguarding Children Board. Anyone who’s ever organised such a thing knows that one of the time consuming challenges is the administration involved in people registering for the event, especially dealing with reserve lists and cancellations. 

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/

I recently blogged that I’d signed up to participate in some workshops to develop the customer service team of the local authority in which I live. Read the intro in this post.

I’ve since received a very formal email thanking me for my interest but regretfully informing me that due to a lack of interest, the sessions won’t go ahead as planned.

How ironic, that if they were engaged in more relevant digital channels (and that’s the reason I want to participate!), they probably would have had a far greater reach to potential contributors.

A slightly worrying development is that they are now suggesting the use of a “virtual” feedback group which will involve people sending their ideas by email.
Hang on a minute…..
Isn’t the idea of a group workshop for people to make connections and for creativity to emerge from that? The whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts, and all that.

It’s all starting to sound like they just want to tick a box.
Yes,  we’ve consulted with people.
Aren’t we good ?
As it happens, they didn’t have much to say!
So we’ll just carry on, because we know best after all.

I’ve replied to the email suggesting a collaborative forum approach which allows for threaded conversations so people can at least engage with others and bounce ideas around.
It’s about letting  people share their thinking, so that together we can develop a plan to make things better.

I’ve even offered to advise on setting up something suitable/acceptable   ….and not had a response.

Do they really want to engage with their customers I wonder?

I work for a local authority adjacent to the one I live in. Just recently I’ve been trying to promote the use of tools like facebook pages and twitter accounts within my own  organisation, but sometimes it can seem like some people think social media means sharing a copy of your newsletter with a friend.

I’ve just signed up to take part in a series of consultation/feedback sessions with the customer services team of my ‘home’ authority, and I’m wondering if I’ll have more influence as a service user, than I do as a keen employee in my ‘work’ county.

We shall see.
I’ll blog about the process here.

Actually – I signed up two weeks ago and still haven’t heard back from them.
Great customer service guys!

Please feel free to share any comments or advice about the best approach to take to influence the powers that be!
thanks