What should I know about hosting an unconference

January 11, 2008 10:09 AM

What should I know about hosting an unconference? Have you organized or attended one before? What worked, what didn't?

A night out with an old colleague and much discussion about the state of our industry conferences led us to the conclusion that we should host our own. He had recently been to an unconference and really liked it. I've never been - but I like the idea.
My company will be hosting the space and lunch and between us we have enough contacts that we think we can get somewhere between 30-50 people to show up for a one day event. We have a forum setup where people will be able to propose topics and vote on things they'll want to discuss.
I'm wondering if anyone has been to or hosted an event like this and has any advice or general advice on conference hosting in general.

posted by Wolfie to technology (6 comments total)

No idea, but this was in the Wikipedia link.
posted by asuprenant at 10:11 AM on January 11, 2008

I've run a bunch of these. They're fun.

"Unconference" can mean a lot of things. It generally means an event that has a lot of participation and conversation, but there's a pretty broad range within that.

Here are some related links that'll help for sure:

Bar Camp has lots of information on running massively-self-organizing tech conferences. They are dedicated to an open-source model for event planning, so you should be able to find lots of documentation online.

Open Space meetings are a potentially good thing to learn about.

There's a nice blog at http://unconference.net/

The folks at Aspiration Technology do some cool stuff. I could have sworn they had some online documentation of their methods, but now I can't find any.


I think my top two tips would be:

- Have a sense of what the goals of your event are.
- Make sure the venue is sufficient for your needs.
posted by ManInSuit at 11:22 AM on January 11, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Oh! Here is the Aspiration Tech facilitation guide.

These are really different kinds of unconferences. Compared to, say, Bar Camp, The Aspiration events tend to have a lot of structure, and rely on good facilitators. In comparison, the Bar Camp events rely a lot more on self-organization among participants.


People can be a bit partisan about the kinds of methods they like, and the ideas behind them. But you can really mix an match however you like.
posted by ManInSuit at 11:27 AM on January 11, 2008

http://unconference.net/ is a tremendous resource, thanks very much for posting it.
posted by Wolfie at 11:48 AM on January 11, 2008

Most unconferences have concurrent sessions (more than one room going at a time) so if you aren't able to offer that, make sure you are clear about what "option b" is. It could be a chill room or break area where people can chat informally.

This is important because the law for most openspace types of things is that if someone isn't adding or getting value from what is going on they should leave.

One other "method" not yet mentioned is World Cafe

I know I've visited a discussion forum for people doing this, but I can't remember where it was. I will see if I can find it.
posted by Mozzie at 2:37 PM on January 11, 2008

I finally found that discussion group again. OpenSpace email list
posted by Mozzie at 2:22 PM on February 25, 2008