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

Mon Jul 9 06:51:39 UTC 2007

Jeff,

Well, I'm not sure "designed" is the right word, WSFII really emerged as
an ad-hoc event and there wasn't too much decided in terms of one
design. I am actually not the best placed to describe its genesis, which
I guess goes back to a meeting in Amsterdam in 2003 or so, a year before
I became involved. I know that there was some influence from other
events that are somewhat of this same style, that perhaps one of our
Berlin or Copenhagen people can better describe. What I see, however, is
that there could and should be a more inclusive forum than those that
exist elsewhere (WSIS) to discuss open infrastructures. The intent was
to have many such events, hence why in 2005 in London, we adopted the
new name, adding an "s" to make summit, summits. We also decided that
since we were keen to discuss the development of more open
infrastructures in the developing world that it would be good to hold
event in a Southern country. Ghana was a favourite by a few of us,
perhaps due to it being the home of the original Geekcorps. Mali, was
also another suggestion because of another Geekcorps project there.

Regarding your second question, who would do the work, well, it would be
impossible to say as the work would in such a model be contributed by many.

So, for Ghana, well, I suppose I'm not too worried if one event tends to
one pole or the other (so long as it serves to provide an open forum).
Perhaps given the short time frame and lack of consensus, that this one
event only step slightly toward a self-organized model. There will/can
be subsequent events where this model could be further refined.

Ian

 Buderer 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
>
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