What's an unconference? I dug up some info around the net--mostly Wikipedia, I confess--below.


An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.

Open Space Technology (OST) is an approach for hosting meetings, conferences, corporate-style retreats and community summit events, focused on a specific and important purpose or task -- but beginning without any formal agenda, beyond the overall purpose or theme. Characterized by five basic mechanisms:

• a broad, open invitation that articulates the purpose of the meeting
• participant chairs arranged in a circle
• a "bulletin board" of issues and opportunities posted by participants
• a "marketplace" with many breakout spaces that participants move freely between, learning and contributing as they "shop" for information and ideas
• a "breathing" or "pulsation" pattern of flow, between plenary and small-group breakout sessions
  

Works best when four conditions are met, namely high levels of:

• complexity, in term of the tasks to be done or outcomes achieved
• diversity, in terms of the people involved and/or needed to make any solution work
• real or potential conflict, meaning people really care about the central issue or purpose
• urgency, meaning that the time to act was "yesterday"

Methods of inquiry--ways to make us all smarter--to consider:

• appreciative inquiry: building on your strengths...how do we improve what works well now?
• 1 - Discover: the best of what is
• 2 - Dream: what might be
• 3 - Design: what should be
• 4 - create a Destiny: what will be
• BarCamp: propose agenda via a wiki or other tools, encourage all to present and all to publish; "an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants who are the main actors of the event"
• Birds of a feather: "attendees group together based on a shared interest and carry out discussions without any pre-planned agenda;" generally allow for more audience interaction than the panel discussions typically seen at conventions; the discussions are not completely unguided, though, as there is still a discussion leader
• Fishbowl: 5 chairs in center, audience circled around; open means 1 chair always open for rotation; closed set by time after which all panelists rotate out; 1 moderator who summarizes discussion at conclusion; suitable for large groups and do not make any distinction between the speakers and the audience
• Knowledge cafe: facilitator kicks off session with open ended question, maybe: "what communication problems can be overcome using social media tools and when did you make that happen?" small groups break off for discussion then return for big group discussion
• Lightning Talk: a short presentation given at a conference or similar forum that last only a few minutes and several will usually be delivered in a single period by different speakers; like pecha kucha/ignite
• Pecha Kucha: 20 slides, 20 seconds each, go!
• Ignite: same but 15 seconds per slide...how creative!
• Speed geeking: like speed dating but presenters get 5 minutes to talk to a small set of the overall group; when the timer rings, the audience rotates and the presenters chat again; awfully repetitive, no?
• TeachMeet: an organised (but informal) meeting (in the style of an unconference) for teachers to share good practice, practical innovations and personal insights in teaching with technology

Read more

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology
• http://www.unconference.net/
  

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