I am at Mashup Camp facilitating. Yesturday a San Jose Mercury News reporter came to cover they event and today we made the front page of the business section with this title – Plan-as-you-go “unconference” unleashes ideas.

I like the article (it is in its entirety in the next page of this blog post). It gets the reason why unconference really work – cause things move fast in this valley and even deciding the ‘agenda’ 2 months ahead makes for stale presentations.

How do you plan a tech conference agenda in the Age of the Internet, when everyone learns about developments in any given field as soon as they happen?
You don’t.
Instead, you give up on planning and hold an “unconference,” also known as an open space meeting.

Doug Gold is one of the organizers of MashupCamp -

he has organized traditional tech conferences, including the gigantic and now extinct Comdex show in Las Vegas. But those conferences were losing luster with the proliferation of online information.
“It rapidly became apparent that high-visibility speakers didn’t know a whole lot more than the audience.

The organizers simply put a big easel at the front of the room, displaying a grid with starting times and room numbers where discussion sessions could be held.
Participants wrote brief descriptions of ideas for proposed sessions on pieces of paper.
Then they lined up at a microphone to very briefly describe their ideas.
Next, they were handed a piece of blue tape and pasted their paper, with the discussion idea, into any vacant spot on the grid.
After about 20 minutes, Mashup Camp had a two-day agenda with 45 sessions.

How to hold an `unconference’

Participants decide among themselves what to discuss rather than following a pre-arranged agenda, run on principles taken from the work of management consultant Harrison Owen.

The Law of Two Feet: If you find yourself neither learning nor contributing, it is your responsibility to respectfully use your own two feet to find some place you are learning or contributing.

Also from the front page of the paper: Kaliya Hamlin walks past people putting up their ideas for discussion topics on the white board, the central organizing tool at the Mashup Camp in Mountain View

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This is the root practice for bringing people together in a group. As the convener(s) of a meeting you are the holders of space. It is a subtle practice that takes time to even realize that it is going on. During our time together in the Face 2 Face workshop I will be actively working on holding space with you in it.
It is almost impossible to describe but I will do my best so you can think about it happening.
Holding space begins the moment that you conceive of a gathering – by just thinking about it you have begun the process of creating the container By saying “when will it be? where will it be? what city? what time of year? what are space needs? what kind of food will people eat? What is the goal? What processes will meet the outcome goals? who should come? who are a key stakeholders? Logistics play a major role in your success. If it is not right, people who get uncomfortable, and that will make holding space harder and reduce outcome.
When you answer these questions write the answers out and perhaps map them visually. The whole should give you a clearer clearer picture of the space you are creating and with that the space you hold.
There is an intentional quality – You could perhaps evoke it by standing with your feet more then shoulder width apart knees bent and putting your arms out bent and holding the shape of a bowl. Be still and feel the energy you are holding in the space. Then think about that feeling and expand it to your gathering.
There seems to be present in all truly successful gatherings the movement of life energy or spirit. Even if you purpose is a technical one, this essence, bound up with your intention and realized in the act of holding space is a key to success.

Speed Geeking is a great way to share projects in a community it is a method innovated at Penguin Days lead by Allen Gunn director of Aspiration.

This process comes from Penguin Day. This process is great because it 1) Supports seeing a range of projects/software in a small group setting. 2) Supports those sharing there work improving there pitch.
You need a ration of audience to presenters of between 4-6 and 1. It works really well with 50 people and 10 presenters.

You spread the presenters around the edge of the room – each at a table or end of a table. You break the audience into small groups. You play referee and start a clock that goes for 4 or 5 min. Then everyone rotates and you do it again. In one hour each audience member will have seen 10 projects and the presenters will have presented 10 times. It is a good thing to do after lunch too.
I have myself speed geeked with an easel and some diagrams on paper to explain digital identity as a concept. They don’t all have to be code or demos.

Update: I have done several “mass” speed geeks with 20 stations and 100-150 people. It helps to get a numbered list of the different projects demoing. Then one sets out numbers in order on tables for the speed geekers. Once they are set it is good to get the audience to self organize into pods of 4-8. Then have one person from each pod raise their hands. If you have 20 speedgeekers and 20 pods – you are good to go. Get the pods to find a starting demo. Then for the next hour keep time every 5 min ringing bells inviting people to move onto the next station. People will really do their own thing and the initial pods will tend to disperse but everyone keeps circulating and sees demos.

Open Space Technology created originally by Harrison Owen, is a great process to support agenda formation amongst technical communities meeting to accomplish work together. Before the day of the meeting participants can put forward ideas they have about sessions they want to present or hope others will present on a wiki. This helps give everyone a picture of what will be talked about. The wiki can also have a list of who is coming to the event – this is sort of inn loo of speakers. You can as the organizer solicit specific people to come and present (just as you would at a regular conference) instead of being put on the ‘schedule’ by you they simply with the rest of the participants come forward to the front of the room and propose the session you invited them to present.
Open Space is good because it helps avoid the problem of ‘one person’ or a ‘small committee’ deciding who should be speaking about what and is a lot less work for the organizers.
It is called “technology” because it is a process. It was innovated in the mid 80’s before the world wide web, and like a lot of good ideas is still important.

The Opening Session
This is where everyone will get oriented to who is there and share the topics they want to discuss. Traditionally Open Space uses a circle to but this can get unwieldy above about 50 people so I usually go with theater style seating. I get everyone in the room to say there name and where they are from (either the company or the place – there choosing). You can also invite people to share a thought about what they hope to get out of the day or a question they hope to get answered. It is good to limit this to a sentence though. You want to make this energizing for the group.

The Day of the Event
The grid – Two pieces of 3’ or 3.5’ wide roles of paper to make a 6 foot high grid. I fold the paper to form the rows (about 9” so that 8.5” paper can fit into the grid) then I just use a maker to make the 12” grid. Along the top you have the breakout rooms listed. (These can actually be small rooms, corners of bigger rooms or even locations like under a certain tree outside). Along the side of the paper you can have the times of sessions.

Session length – I like to use 1 hour sessions with 15 min breaks. You can use up to 2 hour sessions if you know there are a lot of in-depth discussions to have.

Making the Agenda – Participants who want to present, demo or lead a discussion are then invited to come to the front of the room. They get a 8.5×11 piece of paper and landscape style they write with a marker the name of there session topic and their name.

They announce the title of their session to the whole room (maybe into a mic). At this point people can ask the session leader questions. Those who have similar topics know who they are and can speak to them about combining there topic in with there session.

Then once all the sessions have been posted the community standing in front of the schedule wall negotiates the schedule and moves sessions around. The session leader gets to decide whether or not to combine with others and when the session will be held.
If others want to move their session they need to check in with the session leader.

The schedule will likely be made in less then an hour and you can release participants to mingle until the first session.

Closing - The day closes with the all participants gathering in a circle one room and sharing for 20 -30 min the highlights of the day. You can invite people to share critical insights or breakthroughs they had that day. It is also good to invite people who know the have a session they want to lead the next day (if there is a next day) to articulate that.

Day Two – Day two of an open space starts out like the first inviting participants to come forward and put sessions on the agenda. The fist day agenda making includes putting up sessions on day 2 so this morning session is just building on the already proposed schedule.

The morning agenda creation will likely be a lot less time consuming then the first day. I often use the extra time between making the agenda and the first session to do a group process like the spectrogram or a fishbowl.

Food – I like to self cater the breakfast (begels, cream cheese, yogurt and fruit) and snacks (nuts, fuiet, dried fruit, chocolates, muffins) and drinks (soda, juice etc) of a conference because it is so inexpensive to do so. If you can get coffee made and brought in that can work great. You can buy fruit in boxes at the markets where grocers get there fruits. Trader Joes has nuts and other snacky things that are great. I like to bring in a catered buffet style lunch so that food is not wasted.

Documentation – It is important to document the outcomes of these sessions on a wiki. You can also do podcasting of certain sessions including day closings.

The principles of Open Space are important to remember and share with those participating.

• Whoever comes are the right people.
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could hvae.
• Whenever it starts is the right time.
• When its over, its over.
• Document on the Wiki

Law of two feet: If you find yourself not learning or contributing at any time it is your responsibility to use your two feet to take and fine somewhere you are learning or contributing.
They originated to help the day move forward without people getting upset about things being exactly on time or that so-and-so was at there session. The law of two feet is meant to create a social norm about following your inner voice and passion to be in a session or doing something else that you get value out of. It is not meant to condone belligerence towards sessions one is not getting something out of.

I recently did this exercise with the Identity Community to reflect on where we have come from. Someone called it a 1980’s wiki. Using large paper and a wall a map of the community can be made. It could document critical milestones or events in the development of the community or map how people projects are related to one another.
his map is about 6 feet high and 12 feed wide. It starts in one corner with a time line sweeping down and through to the other corner. It has events in pink, media as purple 1/2 circles, white papers as purple squares with corners over turned, Blogs in the community are pink, standards are yellow diamonds and mailing lists are green.
It is really up to you to decide what you use it for. This is an example from the first Penguin Day. It maps Software Developers, Nonprofits and Intermediaries.

A Strong Wind Blows is a fun group introduction method that I learned from attending Penguin Day lead by Allen Gunn director of Aspiration.
It is play with a group of between 20 and 100.
The whole point is to support people being able to get to know one another and a sense of who in the room.
You start with a circle with the number of chairs for people minus one. You can be that person in the middle. This is like musical chairs sort of. The person in the middle says – ‘a strong wind blows for Canadians’ so all the people who are Canadian must get up … and run/walk to a new chair. The person in the middle then is the person who says something true about themselves that is likely a quality, interest or skill that others in the group have ‘a strong wind blows for ruby programmers’ or ‘a strong wind blows for make magazine subscribers’ or anything else. This can go on for 10 min and is really fun. It helps identify common qualities and experiences in the room.

Technorati Tags: methods, unconference

The Spectorgram is fun opinion surfacing method that I learned from attending Penguin Day lead by Allen Gunn director of Aspiration.

The spectrogram is a way to surface opinions in a group and spark dialogue on critical issues. The goal of this is to support sharing of a range of point of views to understand where people are coming from.
It is a fun and interactive process that I first saw used at an event called Penguin Day. You as the leader think of somewhat ‘controversial statement’ that you know people will have opinions about. This should not be something everyone agrees or disagrees with but something with some friendly contention in the community. There is a masking tape spectrogram on the floor with a middle marked. One end will be for ‘agree’ the other end for ‘disagree./; The middle is neutral or don’t know. Read the question out and invite the community spread itself out physically along the line. Then you will go around and interview people about why they are standing where they are on the line. You can do in a room with a working sound system and microphones room or just with a ‘pretend’ microphone. You can both select people at random or go to those who are really passionate about where they are standing. Interview people across the whole spectrum and don’t play favorites – this is not about your opinion it is about letting the group reflect.
This is a good exercise todo at the opening of a day or after lunch. It gets everyone moving and engaged.
How to find the right kind of statement. There are always a range of opinions in a community – This works best if you don’t pick most contentious ones that people violently disagree (other forms of dialogue are likely better to deal with highly contentious issues). It should be Y somewhat ‘controversial statement’ that you know people will have opinions about.
An examples from the Penguin Day (focused on Open Source in the nonprofit sector)
“Nonprofits should only use open source software”
You can either think of these ideas yourself or invite others to come up with ideas about what to do.
Introducing the exercise:
You can introduce this exercise by getting two people to play along with you when you ask a question like the weather here is great here. So if it is raining for example – one person goes to the agree side and says – “i just love the rain because it makes the air so clean. one goes to the disagree side and says “I cant stand the rain – it makes my socks wet” This simple exercise helps orient everyone to how it works.

The Fish Bowl is a way to support dialogue in a community about critical issues. It is called a fish bowl because a center circle of people have a conversation and those sitting around them watch.
The form looks like this. you have a circle of 5-8 chairs in the center. Radiating out from that you have more rows of chairs (with four isles). you could have a few more rows 2-3 or 6-8 if you have a large group.
Those in the center can either be selected or volunteer from the group. This is really a choice you need to make based on your goals…if you know there are several people with different opinions you can make sure those vocal people are in there at the beginning. Letting those who have passion about a topic or issue step forward is also a good way too.
There is always one chair left empty in the center circle. This chair is open for someone else to step into. When someone steps into the empty chair one of the existing center circle people should self select and step out.
As the leader you can frame the opening of the conversation and then let go. Moderating should be kept at a minimum – except for keeping the conversation wandering to far off track.
You can expect to dialogue for about 30 min with a good rotation of people through the center. I have never tried this with and IRC going for the audience but that might be something to try. It might also be good to have everyone put there computers down and really listen.
One option you have is to break the conversation that the center is having and go around the audience (the outer circles) and see what folks are thinking about the center conversation. This creates a feedback loop and gives voice to the rest of the room. You can have a break and continue the dialogue using the fish bowl method.