Here is the punch line …

I have news for everyone who thinks they are going to an unconference or camp by going to Gov 2.0 Camp LA. They are going to a REGULAR CONFERENCE that happens to be organized at the last minute.

I was looking for:

• list of attendees who had signed up
• a clear articulation of the method(s) that would be used
• who would be facilitating
• a list of potential topics that registrants to the event had put forward as they registered

These are the things that I use to decide whether or not to attend an unconference event – not finding any of this information I decided not to plan to attend.

I looked at the website early on and couldn’t figure out how they were actually organizing the event.

• Would it be run as a Bar Camp where there isn’t a facilitator and people just sort of wander in and post sessions on a wall and there is no shared articulation of how people move through space. A weak closing with the energy just kinda fading off.
• Would it use “Open Space Technology” with a facilitator that supports the agenda creation process with everyone announcing their sessions to the whole room in the morning and explaining the principles of open space and law of 2 feet, encourage a range of formats including discussions about topics, and asking questions along with the usual fair of presentations. Open Space Technology also includes a closing where everyone shares highlights from the day.
• Would there be a documentation center to support intensive notes collection that is part of part of the Open Space Technology method or applied in a camp style format.
• Would it be a “pseudo-camp” where the organizers say it is a camp but then there is a pre-selection process of what sessions will happen. This can happen innocently enough by just putting up a wiki and saying we are scheduling the event ahead of time here on this wiki OR with organizers asking for proposals to be submitted and having them voted on.

Returning to the site I found what I feared would be the case it was a pseudo-camp there was a list of “speakers” this statement of how the agenda would be created.

Gov 2.0 LA is a camp-style unconference. Participants will shape the agenda. Rather than spend Camp time creating the agenda, we’re going to create it here, on this site. Here’s how. The Planning Committee has come up with themes around which sessions will be organized. They are:

• Language & Gov2.0
• Women in Technology
• Road Blocks & Barrier Breakers
• State & Local
• The Policy Pickle
• Community Care
• Gov2Gov
• Happy Campers

For each theme there was a page that described it with several good questions their is this statement:

If you would like to submit a speaker/panel submission, please describe what you will talk about, what organization you are representing, the format you are proposing, and how your proposal maps to the Camp themes. Creativity is encouraged!

All submissions for speakers/panels must be uploaded here no later than midnight EST on January 23, 2010. Voting by the Community and space availability will determine if your session is accepted. Voting closes at midnight EST January 30, 2010. The final Camp schedule will be posted no later than February 1, 2010.

The “committee” will then be making the schedule and posting on the site here.

I have news for everyone who thinks they are going to an unconference or camp they aren’t it is A REGULAR CONFERENCE that happens to be organized at the last minute.

It will be interesting to see if they do mix “unconference formats” (that is participant driven sessions developed on site in real time) with the formal regular conference pre-planning they have done.

If they parallel track these two styles it will not be good. Pre-planned and live-real-time the day of planned sessions can be mixed in an event but only if they are serialized – that is having “all” the pre-planned sessions in the morning and “all” the live-real-time the day of sessions in the afternoon.

Update: It seems they are not having any times/spaces for sessions to be proposed the day of the event live by the attendees. It is definitely ”just a conference”

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Last September I took a training with the founder of Innovation Games Luke Hohmann (to be a game facilitator) and it was amazing set of fun “games” to play with the users/customers of one’s products. Quite different then a focus group in terms of the kind of information that you get about how to shape/design your products. (wikipedia article – details all 12 games and information about selecting the appropriate game)

I know what you are asking how is playing games going to help with my products, workplace or process. I wondered this too….here is a simple example.

I explained one of them (Buy a Feature) this way at the Online Community Unconference – say you have a next generation set of features to build for your product – you have 10 potential features but only time to build a few of them – how do you prioritize/decide about which ones to put in the next release?

Buy a Feature is a game you can play to do this (and it is both online and face to face)

You bring in 10 current customers together and give them each $200 of play money. You give each of your features a cost totaling $3000-$4000 (one might be $100 (really easy to build) $500 (harder/more time) etc.) They must amongst themselves figure out how to spend their $2000 to buy a limited set of the 10 features. You could play this with several sets of customers and then gather information about what they want. It helps you make decisions about what to build AND it is fun for them to play the game of “buying” the features they want.

The conference is not limited to “just” innovation games but also includes other design and “serious” games.

• Design games: Offering collaborative design activities within a game format improves idea generation and communication among stakeholders. By shifting focus to the game, power relations and other factors that might hamper idea generation, are downplayed

• Serious games: Ranging from theater improvisation to interactive games technology within non-entertainment sectors, serious games have uses in education, government, health, military, science, corporate training, first responders, and social change

You don’t have to be an expert to attend – if you are just exploring these things we invite you along.

There have been a few companies in the identity space that have used these tools – I just can’t say who.

I am also happy to talk with folks if they are interested in using games to innovate and do better product design in the identity and social web space.

Here is the book if you are interested in learning more.

“Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play” (Luke Hohmann)

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An article was written in the Boston Globe this week Tech Leaders Hope “unConference” will inspire entrepreneurs I was interviewed by the reporter Rob Weisman on Friday. They did a good job of talking about Open Space Technology – however it came off as if it was all “me”. Sigh.

For the unConference, the Massachusetts technology group has tapped a Berkeley, Calif.-based professional facilitator, Kaliya Hamlin, who has run about 50 similar events worldwide, mostly on the West Coast. Hamlin, known as “Identity Woman” for her work in the movement to enable a single log-on for all websites, promotes gatherings based around “open space technology” with no preset agendas.

“Whoever comes are the right people,” she said, summarizing her philosophy. “Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. And whenever it’s over, it’s over.”

Whether such a free-flowing approach can work in tradition-bound Massachusetts remains to be seen. But interest is heavy. Hopcroft said the council is “oversubscribed” on experts and already has fielded 85 applications from entrepreneurs for scholarships.

I shared about the history of the Open Space Technology and how Harrison Owen invented it 20+ years ago and lives in Camden Main. Apparently this blew his whole story line that this was “new” to New England.

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I really respect the long term engagement that Forum One has had in this space – convening events about online community for over 8 years – yes this was before “Web 2.0″ existed. They support a community of professional online community managers and companies who have online communities as part of their businesses coming together that rich and deep one.

This is how they describe the event:

The Online Community Unconference is a gathering of online community practitioners – managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors – to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities.

Those involved in online community development (and social software in general) share many common challenges: community management, tools, marketing, business models, legal issues. As we have found with our past events, the best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners.

They have a great unconference FAQ.

I will be facilitating and also convening a session about the emerging identity tools similar to the one that I gave at Net Squared last week along with talking about the proposal being put forward about relationships being nodes not just edges.

If you are a ‘face to face’ facilitator kinda person but want to explore what is going online with people and groups this would be a great friendly place to come and explore.

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It’s also a little bit about how much wasted effort there is in our field, tremendously talented people consistently trying to reinvent the wheel because they don’t know about other colleagues, conferences, and consortia.

We all got excited about unconferences a few years ago (http://www.unconference.net/). But unconferences interfere with the whole ‘let’s meet in the bar after sessions’ scenario that is so important for greasing the skids in our world.

Holly, what unconferences have you been to? The events I produce have a lot of great ‘at the bar after sessions’ time. In fact they tend to be better and richer because people are energized from their day rather then drained from being talked ‘at’ all day. I invite you to come to one of my events and enjoy the bar after sessions. In fact the topic that would be the one discussed after at the BAR can become a session in open space.

Jennifer Trant asked me to speak at the closing of Museums and the Web about identity. and like most talking heads events the topics were interesting, the format was boring (granted I was at this one for a day and they did slightly more interactive things on the other days). This is the kind of event it would be great to ‘unconference’… You can still do all the juried papers and have them “published.” Folks who want to present their papers are free to do so in the open space format…and you can talk about lots of other stuff directly related to the work at hand too. The wisdom of discerning what is relevant to be talked about in the hands the attendees not the committee that has to decide who is in and who is out.

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