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

Mon Jul 9 05:23:31 UTC 2007

I have been to one BarCamp, held here in Mumbai. I
found the ability to choose my own time for speaking
my mind refreshing. 

I was surprised to find that not a single techie
('well-educated', 'financially sound') was interested
in thinking about questions relating to social
development. I personally thought half an hour to
fortyfive minutes to discuss the subject should have
been enough to evoke some original questioning, but I
was wrong. 

Obviously wsfii meetings attract a different kind of
personality. I don't know enough about BarCamp to know
why this is so.

Finding people to spend time on work is not difficult,
within the wsfii ambit. I don't think we spend enough
time on defining tasks that need to be done, at least
not here on this list. And if not raised here, then it
shouldn't be triggered elsewhere, unless this list is 
getting dysfunctional. I don't think so.  

--- Jeff Buderer <jeff at onevillagefoundation.org>
wrote:

> Ian,
> 
> Good stuff. 
> 
> I have not had a chance to go to one of those
> Foo/BarCamp events.
> 
> The question is how much is wsfii designed along
> those and what might be
> worth considering for future wsfii events?
> 
> Then the question who is willing to invest the time
> in actually doing
> the work.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> -----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 12:37 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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 
=== message truncated ===

Vickram

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