Chapter 2: (Un)Defining a Camp or Unconference

An unconference may at times appear to be chaos in motion, but it is this distinct lack of structure that makes an unconference both a novel experience and a success.

OST: Open Space Technology

The idea was from a man who was called Harrison Owen. Like the hotel bar, the coffee break area can often yield not only the best connections, but the best conversations.

The mode: “In Open Space meetings, events and organizations, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance.” With no head and no sides, everyone has the same authority and right to participate. Circles, asserts Owen, “create communication.”

The sequence of events, follows four ideas: the marketplace, the bulletin board, the circle, and breathing(The Law of Two feet).

The rules:

1. Whoever comes is the right people.
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
3. When it starts is the right time.
4. When it’s over, it’s over.

People participate and share because they are passionate about something, but they move into action, or walk toward a solution, because of responsibility. Flexibility and open communication result in more ideas being shared by more people.

This is not a technology in the traditional sense, but rather in the anthropological sense. OST is a belief system that has changed the way some people approach meetings of all kinds. It hinges on the belief that a group of people, given a purpose and freedom, have the ability to self-govern, self-organize, and produce results.

The meeting with OST is always no agenda, no predetermined outcomes, and no predetermined leaders. Individuals gather together with an idea and then are set free.

Common Unconference Elements

The main element of an unconference that makes it differ from a traditional conference is its schedule—or rather, the lack of an official schedule.

First, the schedule can be voted on by the participants in advance, letting the participants both suggest the topics and then vote on the ones that should be featured. Second, there is generally a broad theme for the camp, but specific topics are suggested and chosen the day of the conference. Third, some combination of preplanning and day-of-the-event planning is used.

An accepted truth at most unconferences is that everyone has something to contribute because everyone is an expert at something or has some inside knowledge that no one else can share.

The combination of self-organization and smaller groups at unconferences allows participants to make better connections with each other and take more of a leadership role in the proceedings.

I have seen professional organizations create large online structures for sharing conference proceedings that they then charge people ridiculous amounts of money to access. Access to the information is often restricted and hard to share outside of those who have paid to use it.

At an unconference there is often no distinction between social time and learning time.

Ultimately, this is the goal of an unconference—sharing and learning. Of course, leadership and guidance are needed to make an unconference successful, but the hand is usually light. At an unconference, people are there because they care and they lead because they have something to contribute.

Facilitation Styles

A good unconference should seek to combine a number of these styles so that people with different comfort levels and learning styles will be engaged.

1/ Appreciative inquiry

When discussing a topic, appreciative inquiry focuses on what works, instead of the areas of a topic that fail or are problematic. There are four steps to the process: Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny.

Appreciative inquiry would seek ways that Facebook benefits the workday. Then the group members would envision how these benefits could be used in the long run; they create a plan to make their dreams a reality, and they work toward that goal.

2/ Birds of a Feather

Is a common name for a meeting in which a group gathers to discuss a general topic, idea, or question. The only structure for this type of meeting is that there should be an agreed-on time for the discussion to conclude.

3/ Dotmocracy

Also called the multivoting method, is democracy and idea sharing in its purest form. After all ideas are documented, on sheets of paper or whatever is being used, members get three to five colorful dot stickers or small sticky notes to vote for their favorite ideas. This is a great way to choose topics for discussion at a conference or as a way of setting an agenda at any meeting.

4/ The Fishbowl

The method is named for the way in which the chairs are set up, with a small circle of four to six chairs in the middle of a larger circle of chairs. In the smaller, inner circle, one of the chairs is left blank and the other chairs are filled. The rest of the members fill the outer circle. When a member of the audience has something to add to the discussion, that person joins the fishbowl by sitting in the empty chair.

5/ Introductions

Introductions and getting to know other participants is part of the excitement of an unconference, so this activity should be facilitated in a fun way. Participants can give tagged introductions where they are asked to stand up, say their name and give two tags that describe themselves, but no other information. Be creative. Make meeting new people a game instead of a task.

6/ The Knowledge Café

Is a two-tiered discussion method that is interesting because of its lack of reporting from smaller groups to a larger discussion group. After hearing the topic and questions, the large group breaks into smaller groups of about five people to discuss the questions. The large group discussion should flow from the discussion that occurred in the smaller groups, not be a rehashing of the smaller group discussion.

7/ Lightning Talks (also known as Speed Geeking or Dork Shorts)

Each presenter has a small audience, which listens and asks questions of them as time permits. Although this is more flexible to the audience, it can be frustrating for presenters as information often needs to be repeated as new people arrive.

8/ Nominal Group Technique

Similar to multivoting, allows every participant to offer a topic (or solution if used organizationally) to the unconference schedule and then allows the group to decide, by voting, which topics will be presented. This ranked list of topics can then be used to create a schedule of popular topics at the unconference for presentations, discussions, or workshops.

9/ PechaKucha and Ignite

At a PechaKucha event, a speaker shows 20 slides for 20 seconds each, making the entire presentation 6 minutes and 40 seconds long. In the Ignite format, 20 slides are shown for 15 seconds each, for an entire time limit of 5 minutes.

The most important things to remember when planning a successful event are transparency and sharing.

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