Today is the day of your conference.You have no podiums. No speakers lined up. No agenda set. Just a venue and a packed audience ready to engage.
If this is your first unconference, you’re prob- ably sweating bullets. Relax. The unconference is one of the most cost-effective, engaging styles of presenting a conference ever created. Known a few decades ago as “open-space
technology,” the unconference is based on the premise that the audience knows what it wants and how to get it. There are no pre-determined speakers. There are no set agendas. There’s only an audience, a venue, and a room or two for the audience to organize sessions for themselves. The audience comes together and sets the agenda for the day, and leaders, speakers, and experts emerge as needed. Someone who has only run contemporary
conferences—the kind with set speakers and agendas—might think unconferences degener-
from the sessions to various social-media plat- forms—resulting in a wealth of knowledge for the audience and ticket envy for non-attendees. Ignite is another popular unconference-style
event. Created by O’Reilly Media, Ignite is described on its website as “a fun night of geek- ery and networking.” In practice, Ignite consists of a series of five-minute presentations, each consisting of20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds, on a wide variety of ideas. Talks have ranged from such topics as “Love 101” to “Geeks” to “Building Your Own Nuclear Reactor,” and they are organized in more than 100 cities round the globe. Anyone can pitch an idea for a talk on some-
thing they feel passionate about. Subjects are voted on by the audience two weeks prior to the
The audience sets the agenda, and experts emerge as needed.
ate into utter chaos.However,many well-known and well-liked recent events have been unconfer- ences, produced for a fraction of the cost of con- temporary conferences. FreelanceCamp, first organized in 2008 in
Santa Cruz, brought together independent con- tractors all across the United States andhas spread to Canada and Germany. On what most would consider shoestring budgets — often less than $1,000 in total — FreelanceCamp organizers manage not only to acquire amazing venues, but also to generate viral social-media promotion by way ofthe participants. The day begins with the audience construct-
ing an hour-by-hour, room-by-room agenda, pitching session ideas, and volunteering to lead them. Surprisingly, this planning session usually only takes around 15 minutes. As the day goes on, participants post pictures, notes, and videos
event, and the participants who receive the most votes create short presentations around their topic. The average event costs under $1,000. Ignite is so well liked that some ofits talks rival TEDTalks in terms ofYouTube viewership. I’m not suggesting that you scrap your entire
formal program and hold an unconference. Perhaps you could simply offer an unconfer- ence-style segment, such as roundtables on broad topics that people opt into attending, with the audience taking it upon itselfto arrange the discussion. Great associations such as the Mechanical Service Contractors ofAmerica do just this, and it is one ofits highest-rated sessions every year. Adding the unconference component not only is cost-effective in terms of AV and speaker costs, it also allows members and del- egates to truly benefit from the networking that face-to-face events promise to deliver.
54 pcma convene December 2010 ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL WEARING
Under Control With unconferences, there’s no catch, no a-ha moment—the simple actof giving up control of the day’s events to the participants, the audience, has an amazing impacton the audience response and the quality of the event. To get control, sometimes you must give itup.
Peter Sheahan is a best-selling author and renowned speaker whose work focuses on exploiting business trends and new market opportunities. His clients include Google, Hilton Hotels, Glaxo- SmithKline, Cisco, Goldman Sachs, the National Association of Insurance and FinancialAdvisors, the American Veterinary MedicalAssociation, and the International Housewares Association. You can reach him at flipstar@peter sheahan.com, or visit www.petersheahan .com for more information.