[wsfii-discuss] Interesting article related to our discussion onself-organizing

Fri Jul 6 17:57:34 UTC 2007

Hi Ian:

In the medical field, this type of "un-conference" is used a lot - it is
called "Evidence Based Medicine".

In other schools it is called "Problem Based Learning".

They all do about the same thing EXCEPT they don't alpha the individuals,
which I think is a great idea.

Thanks for sharing this.  

Asif

http://www.trainerspod.com/CMS
http://www.trainerspod.com/community
http://www.trainerspod.com/info

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-----Original Message-----
From: wsfii-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:wsfii-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Ian Howard
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 1:37 PM
To: Discuss list on the World Summit on Free Information Infrastructure
Subject: [wsfii-discuss] Interesting article related to our discussion
onself-organizing

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006956.html

    Deconstructing Foo-- Designing Better Conferences

Jeremy Faludi <http://www.worldchanging.com/jeremy_bio.html>
July 6, 2007 4:57 AM

Article Photo

A couple weekends ago, I went to Foo Camp
<http://wiki.oreillynet.com/foocamp07/index.cgi>, a conference / camp-out
held by O'Reilly <http://www.oreilly.com/> publishers which we've mentioned
before <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//005952.html>. Because it's an
"un-conference", it's surrounded with a heavy dose of mystique, but I'd like
to demystify it a little, to describe exactly why it's such a fantastic
event and how to design its successes into other conferences.

The problem with most conferences is that they're a small number of talking
heads with Powerpoints addressing darkened masses. The biggest opportunity
most attendees have to participate is asking a question of a speaker at the
end. In the gaps between talks, people mill around more or less at random,
with no clue who around them has similar interests or has expertise they're
looking for. When you're a presenter, people seek you out, but if you're
not, you're left to random chance. But Foo Camp, as the organizers say, is
"a little like Burning Man in that there are no spectators, only
participants."

Everyone is encouraged to give a talk, but discouraged from being a talking
head with Powerpoint. When I asked former attendees what this meant, no one
gave a clear answer, but once I was there, it was very clear. It was just
like being back at Reed College, my alma mater (for the few that'll get the
reference, Foo Camp is Paideia for professionals). Anyone who's gone to a
small liberal-arts school with conference-style classes will know the
format: a handful of people discussing a topic together, each with their own
insights and opinions, after an introductory framing by the teacher (or, at
Foo, whoever convened the session). This still leverages the expert
knowledge of the session host, but it also includes the knowledge and
perspectives of all the session's attendees. Besides creating a richer
session experience for everyone involved (and democratizing the conference),
the attendees get the chance to see who else has insightful thoughts or
experience with the subject, and see who they want to talk with outside the
sessions. This design would work well for many conferences, particularly
ones with a high percentage of experts, like Sustainable Innovation, where a
third or half the attendees are giving talks already. You don't have to be
an "un-conference" to increase participation and improve networking.

Another great feature of Foo, much of which was new this year, was the
creation of a social network site for the event beforehand, where people
could see who else was coming and what their background was, with an
automated clustering tool that color-coded people and told everyone who was
most similar to them and who were their opposites. Even though the
clustering tool was an alpha-prototype and seemed to draw many random
conclusions, it still helped people connect at the event. ("Hi, my badge
says you're my nemesis. We must fight! ...I mean, we must talk and figure
out why we're opposites.")

Some aspects of Foo would not scale to conferences of many hundreds or
thousands of people. Sessions are only really discussions when they have
fewer than twenty (maybe thirty) people in them; they work best with fewer
than ten. This could be managed at a large conference, with minimal
overhead, by having people sign up for sessions in advance. The anarchy of
signing up to give talks was fun, and makes hosting the conference
lower-overhead, but as one woman pointed out in the wrap-up session, the
only people loudly cheering the anarchy method were six-foot-tall men. A
less elbow-based method of the same thing would be to have a wiki online
beforehand, where people can list themselves for talks. (This was sort of
tried at Foo this year, though the online list didn't have any apparent
effect on the real event.) This method could also help avoid the
schedule-clumping problem, where one time slot may have three things you
want to go to and the next slot may have none.

You might think that only software-geek events like Foo could make these
pre-conference online tools, but nowadays anyone can set up a social network
and wiki with Drupal. Hosting a conference could be as simple as inviting a
bunch of people, giving them directions to your backyard, and setting up the
wiki for them to decide who talks about what when. This could be useful for
highly-specific events run by brilliant people with no budget.

The main advantage of an un-conference is that it helps build social capital
among participants. In addition to the participatory sessions and
collaborative / anarchic scheduling, there were places for people to do
things together. One was a Make <http://www.makezine.com/> area where people
could craft stuff together, get their photos taken with edible light
<http://ediblelight.com/>, or get their laptop lids laser-etched.
Another was the tremendously popular games of "werewolf", a game of trust
and group dynamics (which is also fun and devious).

While not every conference needs to be an un-conference (and some definitely
shouldn't), some of its features could be designed into "normal" conferences
to create more vibrant events and create better connections between
participant

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