I haven’t written that much about unconferences and money – for the upcoming She’s Geeky Conference for women in technology, we were getting a some push back about the event costing $118 for two days at the regular registration price. This is from this post on the She’s Geeky Blog “It costs money? I thought this was an unconference.”
The camp movement has been a really inspiring one and in some ways quite utopian. “Just throw it together and it will happen”. Unconferences, just like conferences, require work in the form of time to put on and resources in the form of money to provide for them.
Events are not Free
I don’t believe in “free” events because if an event costs nothing to sign up for it costs nothing to not show to. In the past several “camps” that I was involved with facilitating have had upwards of 50% no-show rates. It is almost impossible to buy food and provision space if you don’t know how many people are coming to an event. The cost should be very reasonable and in paying a fee the attendee makes a contract with the organizer to actually attend. Via the transaction, the organizer makes a contract with the attendee to provide food, physical space and good organization/facilitation.I like to think of unconferences as basically 10x cheaper then regular technology conferences and 10x better.
Why 10x cheaper?
Many Technology Conferences cost between $1000 and $2000 to attend. Yep this is a normal price range for a regular ticket at a conference.
* JavaOne – $2,590.00, conference+ | $1,795.00 regular conference
* RSA security conference – $3,995 conference+ | $2,195 regular conference
* Hot Chips Symposium on high performing chips – $815
* ETech – $1690 conference+ | $1390 regular conference
* Web 2.0 – $1745 conference+ |$1445 regular conferenceOne reason is that many of these these events are for-profit, they are trying to make money and lots of it off convening the event. Another reason is that a coffee break at these events can cost $15 per person to provide and a meal upwards of $60 per person per meal – yes, that bad conference food you ate at your last event cost the organizer that much. These events have costs associated with complimentary passes for speakers, press, analysts etc. These costs are born by the other attendees.
Why 10x Better?
The best part of many conferences are the coffee breaks – they are the interactions with the people. Why pay $1000s of dollars when the best parts are in the lobby? It kinda makes more sense to just make the “way of the lobby” be the way the whole conference works. Open Space Technology -the facilitated method that we use for She’s Geeky- was invented over 20 years ago. It supports the emergence of incredible peer to peer learning opportunities and vibrant discussions. You leave the day full of amazing new ideas and conversations with amazing women. It is totally worth the approximately $10 an hour of conference. I would be very surprised if you don’t come away with knowledge and contacts that are in the long run worth many more times that.Why any cost at all?
The way of the lobby is not zero cost though – the venue costs multiple thousands of dollars and so does food for 200 women. We also have a coffee barista coming both days so you can have fresh espresso. There is a time cost to organizing and logistics that requires money for compensation.
Facilitating Games for Innovation
This Friday I am going to be co-facilitating a day of learning and exchange about Innovation, Design and Serious Games Exchange this Friday in San Francisco. I would like to invite you all to participate. It will be an open space style unconference – with attendees creating the agenda – it is open to all.
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.
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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