On Conferences, Social Conferences, and Unconferences
The world of meeting and events is about to experience a period of tremendous fluctuation in the next year or two. The reason? Competition - from the edges. For more than two years now, I have been keenly watching two formats, primarily - the conference and the unconference. In the last 9 months or so, there’s also been a surge in the Camp model. Both Unconferences and Camps are stirring the proverbial pot and have many in the Meetings Industry wondering whether or not the formats are viable for their own uses.
Background on Unconferences
Yesterday, Dave Winer, creator of the Unconference format (though not the name itself) drafted a manifesto of sorts. The piece, titled "What is an unconference?" has many useful points and I have to agree with pretty much all of it. Here are a few useful excerpts:First, you take the people who used to be the audience and give them a promotion. They're now participants. Their job is to participate, not just to listen and at the end to ask questions. Then you ask everyone who was on stage to take a seat in what used to be the audience.…
I’ve heard it said that there is no advance prep for an unconference, not in my humble opinion, there’s lots to prepare for. The idea is to fully explore a topic from all angles. Every person in the room is responsible, in an ideal unconference, for understanding what’s been said before on the topic at hand, much as a panelist at an old-style conference would be, if they took their job seriously. I always spent a couple of hours, at least, on the phone with each discussion leader before the unconference.
Source: Dave’s Wordpress Blog, “What is an unconference?”
The "Whole" Spectrum
Unconferences have become quite popular in the last year or so - at least the concept of them. As best I can discern, the term itself is sprinkled on essentially any event that's not a "large production" or conference. In fact, that's probably not really a fair assignment.Here’s the spectrum, more as we see it here at syncPEOPLE.
So where are people going wrong? I think many people consider a lack of structure to be indicative of an Unconference. In fact, that’s more a hallmark feature of an Open Space meeting - quite similar to that used in the Camp model. If you’ve ever been to a BloggerCon, for example, you are quite aware that there is quite a bit of organizational structure applied before the anarchy discussion sets in.
A Different Set of Sliders
One of the larger problems is that we continue to assume that these models are at odds with each other. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.My partner in crime, Stowe Boyd, has written up a great review of the various sliders that dictate the success of an event. Here’s just the list, but read the full post:
- Podium Height
- Scale
- Scope
- Technology
- Social
- Format
- Locale
- People
- Sessions
I agree entirely with Stowe’s list. If I were to add anything to the discussion, it would be to raise the roles of profit and passion to the equation. I’m going on a limb here (which I am sure someone will come and saw off soon) to guesstimate that the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from things down spectrum (social conferences, unconferences, and open space meetings) stems from the passion the individual participants have for the subject matter. However, note that I am not saying that traditional conferences are packed with impassionate zombies, just that the format and atmosphere are suffocating that energy.
The profit side - well that’s an argument I will save for another day.
The Truth Is In the Middle
I'm fond of working through problems by balancing equal parts of the parties involved. I don't think any one side is every completely telling the truth - hence, the truth remains somewhere in the middle.Dave’s assertion is that once you go to an unconference, you won’t want to ever go to a traditional one again. That’s flat out wrong. You can scan Stowe’s list of levers to see that there are more things at play. You can scan the room and tally how many people actually participate versus those that simply listen. Are those people simply lemmings that don’t get it or perhaps they’re there to learn by listening?
Here’s what Scoble had to say on the matter:
One other thing? My favorite sessions have been where the speaker has some structure, and a point to make, and then goes into the audience Oprah style to get the audience involved.I think I agree.Maybe the best conference is 50% old style conference mixed with 50% unconference?
Enter Social Conferences
In fact, I agree so much I've dedicated my business life to building just that solution. When we started looking at this industry, we saw immediately that there was a need to bridge these two formats.SocialConference.com provides a platform for deploying these types of events. What kind of event you ask? That’s up to the organizer. We see this as a spectrum where an event can be anything from “mildly socialized” to “completely socialized” and anywhere in between.
The traditional conference business has been around for quite some time. In many, many ways, they are run very conservatively - don’t fix what ain’t broken is how I have had it explained to me. Fortunately for us, and for participants everywhere, is that increasingly organizers of traditional events are starting to see the way that things could be - and they like it.
Naturally, that doesn’t mean that they want to jump in head first - which is where we come in. We make it possible for little baby steps to be taken. We’ll test the value of these systems in some piecemeal manner until more is warranted/desired. Anyone who thinks this is easy hasn’t spoken to an organizer with 100K members and a annual event that brings together 20K of them.
Best of all, we’re almost there. We’re deploying our first socialconferences this week and next and we’ll post some updates for you to get an idea of how this can and will work.
Next month, we’ll open up the platform and anyone will be able to create their own social conference in a few minutes - just add participants :)