I specialize in the art of designing events. I work to balance all the variables involved to create a successful event.

• Clarification of the goals, outcomes and motivations of participants.
• Picking methodologies and developing a score (order) of the event.
• How long is the event?
• How many people are expected?
• What is the space availability?
• Recommendations on social media tool usage

Unconference methods are universal but work better if adjusted slightly to fit both the culture of a community and the phase of growth they are in. I work with organizations, companies and communities in various stages of development, incubating, developing, plateauing and mature.

Please contact me if you would like to know more about my services.
 kaliya [at] mac.com (510) 472-9069

I specializes in several different kinds of unconferences this page describes those events and talks about past clients.

• Unconferences for Professional Organizations
• Unconferences about a Subject
• Unconferences for Technical Communities
• Unconferences Internal Company Organizations
• Unconference Design Work
• Unconference supplemental to Traditional Conference

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

MassTLC (Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council)

MassTLC had hosted a fall conference for entrepreneurs to pitch to investors – wanting ot o revitalize this event they chose to explore the unconfernece format. Kaliya’s design expertise was leveraged to bring together a fantastic one day event that mixed together 4 generations of mass technology innovators.

Check your meeting expectations at the door. Having attended two brilliant and very different unConferences facilitated by Kaliya, I suggest you be prepared to have your mind blown instead. Just do it. – Andrew Borg, CEO, Hi-Beam Entertainment (attendeeast Online Community Conference NYC and MassTLC)

Live twitter quotes from Pistachio:

Pistachio: #masstlc wow, this is a pretty large event. Bill good time for innovation “in bad times, ppl are looking for new ideas”

Pistachio: Big group and all, new, interesting faces outside of our fishbowl, which rocks. #masstlc

Pistachio: @identitywoman is doing a great job. More info: www.masstlc.org #masstlc intros almost over. Room is packed with tech + venture firepower

Pistachio: @identitywoman is facilitating. she’s so brave!

One Club for Art and Copy Don Buckley, Director of Communications Technology @ The School at Columbia University

CONFERENCE ON A SUBJECT

Usually conferences about a general topic area bring together pre-selected speakers and an audience of listeners who want to learn. They are not necessarily drawn together because a shared affiliation or working together in community. Unconference methodologies work well to support peer-to-peer learning, inquiry into critical questions, and working collaborations.

She’s Geeky: Connecting Women in Tech

Online Community unConference
This event is produced by Forum One Communications for online community managers, online community platform builders and companies that host online communities for their businesses. It has a reputation for high quality peer-to-peer exchange on the best practices and issues for online communities.

Kaliya is a master facilitator, and well versed in Open Space Technology. While Kaliya uses Open Space as a base, she is also not afraid to try new formats and techniques.

Kaliya has helped us grow our Unconference business in the last 3 years. She is an asset during all stages of event planning and production, form initial concepts all the way to handling facilitation during the event. I consider her a strategic partner for our organization. - Bill Johnston Forum One

Ruby on Rails Camp

Kaliya helped facilitate this day long event produced by Max Dunn and Wido Menhardt in November 2006

I want to thank you, Wido, Kaliya and Steve for putting on Rails Camp. I got a lot out of it – I think all of us did – and it was a truly pleasurable event as well as being productive. - Michael Mazour

“We had no previous experience hosting an unconference and Kaliya provided invaluable guidance that made our Ruby on Rails Camp a huge success!” Max Dunn, Co-Organizer, Ruby on Rails Camp

Mashup Camp

Kaliya was the founding facilitator of Mashup Camp. She gave this unconference for the uncomputer its unique format. This Included open space technology for peer-to-peer learning and Speed geeking. Mass Events Labs is now part of CMP who continues to produce the event. Startup Camp also produced by Mass Events Labs had a similar format to Mashup Camp.

This coverage was in the San Jose Mercury News July 19, 2006

Kudos to David Berlind and team running StartupCamp. This camp is extremely well setup and very professionally done. Congratulations!
on StartupCamp 2 from Ananda Iyer

Mashup Camp 3 at MIT in Boston wrapped-up yesterday. It was another well organized, well attended, very successful event… - Programmable Web

PROFESSIONAL TECHNICAL COMMUNITIES
These communities are interacting together online to solve a common problem or have a shared professional niche. Many, but not all, of the participants know each other online and continue to meet face to face over years.

UnMoney Convergence
Was co-produced and facilitated with Bill Aal from Tools for Change and Chris Lindstrom from the EF Schumacher society. It brought together people working on doing things differently with money from those doing things in the traditional economy to community and alternative currency and those living by a gift economy.
Scala Lift Off

David Pollack the founder of Lift the framework of an emerging functional programming language, Scala, hired me to help design and facilitate their first ever conference following JavaOne in 2008. Subsequently I facilitated their second event following JavaOne in 2009 and in Octoboer 2009 in the DC Area.

The unconference was facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin. Kaliya very deftly created the container, or context, in which the unconference could self-organize, ensuring that sessions emerged, that there was clarity as to the shape of the space, and that everyone involved was vested in participating fully, whether by volunteering to lead sessions or by making themselves heard in the sessions. Kaliya is so good at what she does that, in classic great facilitator/manager style, she effectively disappeared most of the time, reappearing only when some collective transition was to be made. That’s a very poor description of the fluidity that she brought to the process—I’ll try to come up with a better one. -Lambda the Ultimate Blog

User-Centric Identity Community
This community is where founder Kaliya Hamlin began her facilitation practice in 2005 and has co-produced and facilitated over 10 events in the field. The rapid pace of innovation and the culture of collaboration amongst firms in this space (MSFT, AOL, SUN, Google, Yahoo!, and a range of start-ups) is attributed in large part to the quality of these gatherings.

• Internet Identity Workshop (8)
• Identity Open Space (3)
• Data Sharing Events (3)

Kaliya is deeply knowledgeable about this technical field, having helped it grow for the past five years. She is a steward of Identity Commons. Her blog on the subject is Identity Woman.

The event, an unconference, was one of the best conferences, prefix or no, that I’ve ever been to, much less been part of. - Doc Searls

There will quite possibly be a “B” edition in the fall, probably on the East Coast if Windley, Searls and Hamlin can put it together. If they do, you should drop everything and plan to be there.
- Dave Kearns in Network World

IIW 2006 WAS A SUPEREVENT Everyone in attendance was awe-struck by the IIW 2006 that just took place in Mountain View. It was incredible. With Doc Searls and Phil Windely navigating at the macro-level, the amazing Identity Woman Kaliya orchestrated an “unconference” that was one of the most effective events I’ve ever attended. It’s clear that creating synergy out of chaos is an art that these three have mastered, and participants floated in and out of sessions that self-organized around an ongoing three-day hallway conversation – the hallway actually being the main conference room and event! So we got to engage in all kinds of one-on-one (and few) conversations, meet new people, work out concerns and above all work on convergence. Many people told me they felt history was being made, and I did too. - Kim Cameron Microsoft’s Chief Identity Architect.

This week I saw a significant “state change” occur in this year and a half “Identity Gang” evolution, and it tells me things are going to start to happen…These efforts were each begun with a very different mission and with a very different use/case and problem set driving them, and this has previously created division and competition. This time, however, it was clear that everyone was looking for where they should get on board, and how to avoid having their goals left out. – Phil Becker, Digital Identity World Newsletter

INTERNAL COMPANY/ORGANIZATION UNCONFERENCE
Occasionally we will work with companies seeking to support exchange and innovation within their company. In 2006 Kaliya ran and internal Unconference for AOL on their main campus outside Washington DC.

On June 1st, AOL held its first “Un-conference”. Kaliya Hamlin came and facilitated the day and as always did a great job. The event was sponsored by the AOL Architecture Council and the goal was to build community around technologies and strategies that are key to AOL’s success. Since this was the first un-structured conference here, there was some nervousness about how well it would work. However, there was no need for any nervousness, as there were over 100 participants and the day’s grid of sessions quickly filled to almost full. We had a lot of good discussions…. - Mike Cummins, AOL

USER CONFERENCE
Companies often host a conference for the users of their products. They typically program these with presentations from company employees who talk at the users and identifiers from amongst users who present case studies to other users.

Unconference methods allow for intensive interaction and peer-to-peer learning opportunities amongst users. And via Innovation Games (R) the opportunity to get detailed information from users that can inform product evolution.

UNCONFERENCE DESIGN

The Process Geeks also work with organizations just in a design capacity – that is supporting a team to develop a conference plan and empowering those on staff to facilitate particularly when this involves long travel. She has also worked with more local teams seeking her expertice in working with technical communities.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Libraries Peer Learning Meeting

This event was held in March of 2008 in Latvia. Kaliya worked with the PLM planning team for a day in February to introduce the format to the Global Library Staff and plan their 5 day conference which included 2.5 days of Open Space.

Journalism that Matters – News Tools 2008
Vetran facilitators Peggy Holman, author of the Change Handbook and Stephen Silha tapped Kaliya to join their design team because her particular expertice in facilitating events for techies in Silicon Valley. Bringing techies and journalists together was at the heart of this event – to support cultural understanding between these two communities Kaliya brought Value Network Mapping into the design – In a two day pre-workshop the old newsroom and emerging newsroom were mapped out. These were introduced the first day.

ADDING AN UNCONFERENCE DAY TRADITIONAL CONFERENCE
Traditional conference organizers can support an unconference happening before or after their regular event. This can be a warm up to actually using interactive methods in the main part of the conference. We have worked with organizers of BlogHer on a post conference open space day for the past two years that is the favorite day of many women who attend.

Supernova Deborah Schultz and Kevin Werbach asked me to help produce and facilitate a pre-conference Open Space, June 19th, 2007 on the subject of ‘the new Network.

I had the opportunity to sit in on some brilliant sessions and discussions, especially during the Unconference part of the conference on Tuesday. -Launch Squad