Meeting planners, take note…………..unconferences are in
Business Week in the UK says that unconferences turn the plodding and predictable business gathering inside out.
“They’re a hybrid of a teach-in and a jam session, with a little show-and-tell mixed in, and they are attracting hundreds in cities like Austin, Tex., Bangalore, San Francisco, Sydney, and Tokyo,” the site says.
Unlike traditional conferences, they’re totally unstructured—the agenda isn’t determined until the opening day of the event.
Everyone who shows up is a potential speaker, and those who don’t speak contribute by posting photos, blog entries, podcasts, and video clips of the proceedings.
Attendance is almost always inexpensive or free.
“Dozens of the meetings are popping up, and in some surprising sectors,” the site says, with subjects ranging from banking and finance to wine-tasting.
Proponents draw a parallel to other crowd-driven movements that threaten to unseat highly profitable business models.
“Unconferences will totally displace the more staid, big, established conferences,” predicts Doug Gold, who runs a Massachusetts startup, Mass Events Labs Inc., that produces several unconferences.
Dave Winer, a blogger and software developer who organized an early unconference at Harvard Law School in 2003, believes one factor spurring the growth of unconferences is their ability to tap the intelligence of the people who usually sit mute in the audience.
Once someone has attended an unconference, Winer wrote, “you’re spoiled. I’ve heard it said many times by people with unconference experience that they can never sit in a dark room with their hands folded, waiting for the Q&A period, listening to a PowerPoint presenter drone on and on.”
The unconference movement is also a response to the commercialism of many business gatherings. “I don’t see why I should pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege of being sold to,” says David Tamés, a consultant and blogger who spoke recently at PodCamp NYC, a free gathering about podcasting.
Unconferences don’t have big-bucks underwriters, and there’s usually no financial upside for organizers, says Business Week.
But sponsors typically provide in-kind donations, such as a venue, T-shirts, or food. And a few entrepreneurs are hoping to turn unconferences into for-profit ventures.
Report by David Wilkening
John Alwyn-Jones
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