I touched on unconferences in an earlier post, but I feel the special qualities of them warrants a little extra coverage.
The normal conferences I attend follow the regular pattern; you have a list of speakers announced a month or so in advance, a morning full of talks, lunch break, an afternoon full of talks. This is great for classroom-style learning, but most of the fun happens in the evening when you have chance to discuss the topics with other attendees.
Unconferences (like the one I’m attending next week) have two major differences. Firstly, after every talk there’s a 15 to 30 minute coffee break. This means you can immediately discuss any ideas that were brought up during a talk. If you’re lucky you can catch the person giving the talk, both to offer thanks and expand your knowledge a bit with a quick chat. With this going on through the day, by the evening you’ve already done your extra learning and can relax. Or fire up the laptop at the bar for an impromptu coding session.
The other difference is they don’t organise any speakers in advance. This has two benefits. One, it makes the whole event a lot cheaper. You’re not paying out speakers fees, arranging transport and accommodation for them, etc. The other benefit is that any attendee can propose a talk. These are submitted on the morning and then voted on by the rest of the conference attendees. This is why I’m preparing a talk at the moment to propose next week. There is no chance I’d get up on stage in front of a couple of hundred people and give a talk. But to a room of twenty people who know in advance I’m not a professional speaker (and so hopefully don’t heckle me too much), well, I no longer have any excuses to stop me.
So as well as being a great place to learn and share ideas, an unconference can be the ideal place for someone to give a talk for the first time. Hopefully…