Or perhaps use twitter?

In keeping with what was mentioned on blog.willmcinnes.co.uk about the Chinwag Live Measuring Social Media event, it is vitally important that the audience gets to influence the agenda *as it happens*, especially if there are experts both on stage and off.

The coffee-break feeling can be maintained if attendees feel they can jot something down during a session and have it influence the next panellist’s response.

I think handing out some index cards and pens before each session and encouraging people to note down comments/questions would help.

I think that the open approach is the best way to actually learn from experts.

If you think about it the most successful part of events are coffee breaks when experts mix with attendees and networking takes place.

In this view the focus of conferences should be participants not experts. The best way to learn is to discuss not to listen. 99% percent of the experts I have contacted for ecoCamp are more than happy to discuss and to start conversations instead of presenting slides filled with bullet points.

“…Bearing in mind that barcamps tend to run over at least 1 day, allowing time for the agenda to be set and tweaked throughout. There just isn’t time to do this at an evening event…”

I think that if you delegate to wikis and online platforms such as eventbrite the whole organization logistics you will still be able to apply the method to small session with limited time and participants.

If you also integrate a software to manage agenda setting the day of the event people could simply vote on the spot for sessions and topics.

What I really advocate here is that the coffe-break feeling determines and has determined the success of these type of events so it should be preserved as much as possible

I love barcamps but I also love learning from industry experts in shorter sessions (I’m a busy girl!).

My thoughts are really around how do we apply an unconference approach to these shorter evening sessions where the event is all about learning from industry experts?

Bearing in mind that barcamps tend to run over at least 1 day, allowing time for the agenda to be set and tweaked throughout. There just isn’t time to do this at an evening event…

I am helping to organize ecoCamp a BarCamp about ecology/sustainability/the environment where we do not define topics and discussion but only accept suggestions on the wiki.

We do not even accept presentations as tool of controlling the discussion which should be free and agreed on the spot. We allow “promoters” of topics to use any tool to prove their argument but we do not want one-way preso, just discussion.

We also thought that every session should produce something. i.e. a document written by the participants which will be part of a final document, open and available to all.

We thought that speakers/panelists/sponsors might have great opinions but that they should be conceived as the regular attendee.

One rule of OST is that whoever come to the event, those were the people who should have been attending and in this view only those at the event could decide what to talk about, when to talk about it and how.

I know it seems a bit radical but we’re getting extremely positive feedback

Unconference style events are in my opinion the way forward, and do provide an incredibly rich “immersive” environment for all the “participants”.

I hosted a MediaCampBucks last year which was basically the same thing as you are thinking about here, we had three tracks or themes, and sessions worked out before the day. (http://achubbucks.pbwiki.com/SessionsOffered) I’d be happy to help out with some tips on that should you need.

In fact we are having another one during May this year in High-Wycombe. (30 mins west of London)

However, typically an unconference is exactly that, so limiting the unconference to only “set speakers” or a “panel” is not really in the spirit of an unconference, which usually “opens-up” the possibility for anyone to run a session, of course it can be time and resource dependant.

The other issue you may find is that unconferences are free to attend, which can make it tougher to get people along to run a session, if it is not a paid gig. Though of course sponsorship can pay for that.

That’s a few thoughts for you anyway.

Chris