For those of you who have never heard of Convene magazine it is for the “Professional Convention Management Association” The cover says “Lights! Content! Action! : The unconference, the virtually boundless meeting and other scenes from the content revolution p.46” It has a picture of a stylized business man and woman putting lightbulbs into a bigger light bulb – like building the light bulb. It kinda makes sense.

I am quoted several times in The Power of UN article.

Plus, they’re inevitable. It’s simply a given that the increased interactivity of the workplace will show up in the conference space, said Kaliya Hamlin, who in November was named to Fast Company’s list of the 13 most influential women in Web 2.0. Hamlin, “chief process officer” of Process Geeks, has facilitated more than 50 unconferences over the last three years, in high-tech as well as more traditional settings. She expects that interactive methods such as the unconference will disrupt the “groove that meeting planners have been in forever” of scheduling speakers and presentations six to nine months out, and creating meetings where the real work actually gets done during coffee breaks. Hamlin is a critic of traditional conferences – not because she discounts the value of meetings, but because she believes passionately in their potential to solve problems.

“I think there is a lot of uncertainty on the part of conference organizers who feel they have to have a preplanned agenda,” Hamlin said, “so that people will invest their time” in traveling to a conference. But it’s a mistake to think that keynotes are what bring people to a conference. “What is really valuable is the face time for conversations about critical issues and emerging developments,” Hamlin said. “Community is what brings people together. Supporting community interactivity is what gives conferences value.”

Interactive methods will work for anybody, Hamlin said, but they “must map to the way that professional communities interact with each other.” It’s a matter of trusting the facilitator or meeting designer to meet a community where it is culturally, she said.

In instances where Hamlin helps organizations incorporate unconference methods where they are unfamiliar, she often suggests that one traditional day of programming be followed by a day in which participants organize the content. Her clients often love the open-space day and find that experiencing them lessens their appetites for traditional conferences. “They like them a lot less,” Hamlin said, “and consider them to be ineffective.”

Open space is an awesome tool to use to deal with complexity, she said. “Magic happens in terms of collective understanding and breakthoughs.”

What is kind of amazing about this coverage is that I also was highlighted this month in Fast Company as one of the Most Influential Women in Technology for my other career in Identity. I wrote this article for them about the women working in user-centric digital identity with me.

Last night I got several pings from friends who heard me on the last 5 seconds of Marketplace for the piece airing today on unconferences. I was interviewed by a correspondent of theirs during MacWorld in January. I hope they do a good job of covering the phenomena.
The web changes ‘everything’, including traditional conferences. Why would you go across the country to listen to people present papers, talk on panels, visit trade show booths or watch .ppt presentations when you could do all of that ‘online’?

• Trade Show Booths – Type your industry niche in Google – visit the websites, do your research
• Papers – read them beforehand
• Presentations of Paper – watch them on YouTube
• PPT Presentations – watch them on Slideshare
• Get a sense of someone – Read their blog and check out their Flickr stream
• Panel presentations – read a good blog conversation about the subject you are interested in

Face time with other people IS really valuable, rare and expensive. Having meaningful conversations, getting advice from peers and tackling challenging issues is something that is good use of time. Using methods that are structured but leverage the “wisdom of the crowd” gathered are what unconferences are about.

After attending the Internet Retailer Conference and the Online Community Unconference 2007 last week, I’m really seeing the amazing value that Unconferences offer. They have the right people in the room and I’ve found them to be tremendously valuable as a dialogue of sharing rather than the one-way communication of traditional trade events. It’s very much reflective of Web 2.0. If you haven’t been to one before, try one.
-Web 2.0 business by James Key Lim

When I design, facilitate and produce an unconference 80-90% of the time at the event will be spent in open space and the other 10-20% of the time will be spent with other large group participatory processes that help meet the gathered community meet its goals. These include Fishbowls, Spectrograms, cafe dialogue processes, Appreciative Inquiry, Marketplace of Ideas, Value Network Mapping, Polarity Management, Visual Journalism/Graphic Recording, and shared community maps.

This slide presentation shows both Open Space and other formats and goes with a 4 page PDF describing how Open Space is used in the communities I regularly facilitate. There is another presentation on human interaction design and unconferences. I recently wrote a piece called Unconferencing that describes how to ‘prepare’ to be at one.

I consult with organizations, companies, conference producers and community leaders helping them design effective unconferences. Recently I helped the Gates Foundation plan for an upcoming meeting of their Global Libraries Program. I also facilitate events a range of events that both I and others produce (a list of all my past facilitations is in the sidebar).

I specialize in bringing networks together that over time can innovate in complex environments. I have been leading the convening of the user-centric identity community since its inception. We are working on building the next layer of the internet – the identity layer. Our 6th major event coming up in May.

Since I began leading unconferences in the tech world I have expertise in how to use community web tools to complement the processes both before during and after.
I hope you enjoy the site, please contact me if you have questions about unconference or my consulting services. Kaliya (at) mac (dot) com

I am working on a great new event this fall. It is for women who work in technology called She’s Geeky. It is October 22-23 in Mountain View CA.

I would encourage you all to let women you know in tech know about the event.

We have three simple goals with the event.

• Exchange skills and learning from women from diverse fields of technology.
• Discuss topics about women and technology.
• Connect the diverse range of women in technology, computing, entrepreneurship, funding, hardware, open source, nonprofit and any other technical geeky fields.

We have aimed to make it affordable and accessible for women costing $125 (until Sept 30).

I have written more about my motivations and hopes over on Identity Woman. We are doing a blog/link campaign today so if you want to blog about the event today is the day to do it.

The Buzz Bin asks some interesting questions about unconferences.

I haven’t been to an unconference as of this posting and I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Are they really as great as people say? Or is it just hype because it’s something new?

To start off with the format of ‘unconference’ that you are referencing is at Corporate Communications and the Social Media Revolution. It is using a format that is quite challenging to actually do well.

Ragan has recruited Social Media guru Shel Holtz to chair the event and act as one of the discussion leaders. Think of these leaders as researchers who have been given the task of writing a report based on the knowledge in the room.

Let’s take the topic: “How do I get my CEO to write a blog that is personal and honest?”

The discussion leader will immediately call on those in the room who have already done this and ask them to explain. Meanwhile, Ragan will use interactive brainstorming technology to post tips, tactics and strategies on a screen as the day unfolds.

The format of rooms of 50-200 people with a ‘discussion leader’ that is pre-chosen and the topic areas are generated by the audience or that are ‘pre-chosen.’ I personally don’t think they are that different than talking heads conferences, and depending on the style of facilitation, can be more frustrating. If they organize breakout rooms and help people make the agenda in the morning, they can be amazing events.
Unconferences are really great when you have a good invitation – a clear purpose or inspiring reason that is attracting people to the event. Supernova Open Space was good but it wasn’t ‘great’ because the topic was very broad and the organizers did not really promote it as part of the ‘main’ event.

Several people who attended both said they enjoyed the Open Space day more then the talking heads conference part of Supernova. Unconferences are particularly great if you have someone taking care of holding the space well. This is details around the event by ensuring people’s needs are met for food, liquid nourishment and physical comfort.

First of all, the unconference is totally free. Really? OK, what’s the catch? Turns out only the first day is free – then they “hope you stick around” for the $795 conference that follows the next two days. Guess there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

First of all, unconferences are not by default “free.” There are many costs to bringing people together in large groups (venue, food, facilitation, supplies, hotel for the organizers, AV etc.). This can be covered by the participants themselves through a fee (granted this is at A LOT lower cost then traditional conferences, usually 5-15x lower) or by sponsors. Getting sponsors takes a lot of effort on the part of the organizers and can create sponsor fatigue. Just getting participants to pay something can make the model more sustainable. A friend of mine who put on a weekend unconference that he did not charge for ended up $3000 out of pocket. If he had charged something, he would have had a better handle on the number of attendees AND he would have had some money left over to cover unforeseen expenses that sponsors’ money didn’t cover.

The Internet Identity Workshop and the Online Community Unconference both are events that had very strong invitations and communities that they were reaching. They have a reasonable fee (anyone whose job it is to pay attention to or work in those fields has no problem paying the cost to attend). The organizers of both are committed to letting those for whom the cost is an issue attend. They also both had sponsors.

Next, the audience helps prepare the agenda. Two weeks before the event registrants will receive a survey to help shape the agenda and choose topics. Does this really work?

I am not sure what unconferences you are talking about that actually ‘set’ the agenda ahead of time online (perhaps PodCamp?). This makes for a regular talking heads conference without the benefit of organizer curation. What does work really well is attendees or potential attendees putting forward topic ideas ahead of time on the wiki. Then the day of the conference, they make the agenda together in the opening session using Open Space Technology. I use a grid on the wall with times along the side and spaces along the top and then the individuals come forward, write their session topic on a 8×11 paper, their name and then announce to the audience their topic and then post it on the wall.

Finally, it’s promoted as an idea exchange and brainstorming session. No boring lectures. Instead, a question will be posed and the “wisdom of the crowd” will answer it based on their collective knowledge. Sounds utopian. Wouldn’t chaos ensue if “everyone’s a speaker”?

Using open space technology everyone ‘can be’ a speaker, but in practice about 1/4 – 1/3 of attendees put sessions on the agenda. They do a range of things from giving a talk for 1/2 an hour, demoing their product, posing a problem they have and seek answers, or hosting a conversation about a burning question. You can think of these as a peer-to-peer learning environment.

Andrea in the comment asks this question: can this translate to an executive audience?

YES! if you have a facilitator with experience who is working with the conveners to ensure that the space is created in alignment with the cultural norms of the executive. Your production values for space and food must match that audience and therefore the price is not free.

The internet Identity Workshop has top people at Microsoft (Chief Identity Architect), Liberty Alliance (Executive Director), top people from Sun Microsystems, CA, Oracle, AOL, and other companies. It is a working tech conference, however. Recently I flew out to AOL and led an unconference that senior architects participated in. I was at TED 2005 and there was so much amazing brain power in the audience all sitting listening to presentations. I wonder what it would be like if they supported the audience making their own conference. David Hornik is trying an format called “The Lobby” with a $4,000 price point – so if you are attending you are an executive. I am curious what format they are choosing to use besides milling in the lobby.

One downfall, posted by blogger Kaliya Hamlin, is the gender bias she experienced. “I am ‘the woman’ doing the more feminine role of facilitation – a key part of what actually makes an unconference run was made invisible in the [BusinessWeek] article.”

I find it interesting the way my commentary on the Business Week article was put forward as a downfall of the event when it was really just a critique of media coverage of the phenomena, not the phenomena itself and specifically the writer of the Business Week article. The producers of the Online Community Unconference were very grateful for my help and fully ‘saw me’ to the attendees at all of my events. The article had a challenge.

Having said that womens’ attendance at BarCamps and other very geeky unconferences is an issue, I think this is in part because the ‘rules of barcamp‘ are not particularly welcoming and usually those communities don’t emphasize the art and practice of invitation.