Conference vs. Unconference

I’ve been thinking lately about how an unconference style event for an association could work. I’ll be posting some ideas on that later on. I thought it would be good to start by comparing the characteristics of conferences and unconferences. So, in no particular or meaningful order, here is my initial list:

Conference	Unconference
Attendees	Participants
Exhibitors	Participants
Recruiting speakers	Recruiting participants
Content planning	Content facilitation
Direct marketing	Word of mouth marketing
Handouts	Wikis
12 month planning cycle	12 week planning cycle
Sponsorships	Donations
Once a year	As often as needed and desired
Large budgets	Shoe-string budgets
Maximize value for organizers	Maximize value for participants
Best practices	Innovation
Top down	Bottom up
Wisdom of experts	Wisdom of crowds
Magazine coverage 2 months later	Live blogging/podcasting
Slides	Stories
Panels	Conversations
Best practices	Practicing
Hierarchy	Networks
Directive methods	participatory methods
Participants	Contributors/creators
Speakers	Conversation starters
Sharing information	Learning collaboratively
Instruction	Discovery
Best learning in the hallway	It’s all hallway!

I’m sure a lot more can be added to this but it’s a start.

I also just created a Wikipedia entry for unconference. I was surprised it didn’t exist yet.

Update: Added a couple more items suggested by Rich Westerfield. (I changed Powerpoint to Slides.)

Update 2: Added several more contributed in the comments by Nancy White and Jeff De Cagna. Thanks Nancy and Jeff!

Comments

Nancy White
Here are a few more:

Best practices / PRACTICING

hierarchy/networks

directive methods/participatory methods (i.e. Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, games, etc.)

November 18th, 2005 at 11:18 pm
Jeff De Cagna
A few more:

Participants/contributors or creators

Speakers/conversation starters

Product/authentic experience

Sharing information/learning collaboratively

One interesting idea/An limitless number of compelling insights

Instruction/discovery

Everyone in the same physical place/anyone, anywhere and in their own ways

“Best learning takes place in the hallways”/It’s all the hallway

Let’s keep adding!

November 19th, 2005 at 1:45 am
Association Inc. » Blog Archive » 2005 Association Inc. “Why Not?” Awards
[...] Best Conversation About Something That Is Actually Going to Be Important. The unconference, which was discussed by several bloggers, but which can be summed up in David Gammel’s post here. [...]

December 20th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
David Gurteen
David,

I just love this idea. Giving the format a name - brings it to life. I have been running conferences and facilitating knowledge cafes for the past two years or more with many of these principals in mind.

Your posting inspires me to further develop the concept and encourage traditional conference organizers to change their ways - though this won’t be easy :-)

Regards
David Gurteen

December 31st, 2005 at 10:24 am
Laura Howard
Love this. I’m reading “World Cafe - Furthering the Future by Having Conversations that Matter” - very similiar concepts. Co-activity brought to life.

Another one:
Experts/Passionate Users
Personal/Universal
Agenda/Purposeful Flow

Delightfully,
Laura

January 23rd, 2006 at 10:31 pm
David
You know, I had my first world cafe experience last December and really got a lot out of it. As I’ve been thinking about unconferences, I see using a world cafe session as part of the kick off could be crucial to warming everyone up and getting the ideas flowing for identifying the content and who will be doing what during the rest of the meeting.

January 23rd, 2006 at 11:24 pm
Laura Howard
And what a great wrap - discussion of the concepts rising of importance for each person and then culling the collective wisdom…

January 24th, 2006 at 12:00 am
High Context Consulting » Blog Archive » An Unconference for Association Executives
[...] One of the commonalities among the unconferences going on is that they typically have a high-level focus of some sort that will attract the right audience to discuss that set of issues. I get the feeling that Ben is envisioning ASAE’s annual meeting with all the topical structure stripped away. This isn’t how I’ve been looking at it. I think the traditional annual meeting format is the complete antithesis of an unconference. It is too huge of a content tent. There has to be some focus around which to gather people. [...]

May 9th, 2006 at 4:02 am
blog no 1 » Blog Archive » conference vs. unconference
[...] Eine willkürliche Liste, über das neue/alternative Mindset im Web. —> hier [...]

May 16th, 2006 at 11:24 am
7daysandmore» Blog Archive » Update: How to Unconference
[...] “There is a reason why people like conferences with a lot of unscheduled time between sessions, and why the hallway discussions are frequently more animated than the discussions in the conference rooms. Some people believe it’s because the quality of speakers is inadequate (specifically because they lack the ability to make complex, important subjects understandable and interesting), but I’m inclined to believe it’s more because most people get more value out of one-on-one and small-group conversations with both peers and experts, where they get to discuss the issues and get answers in the context of their particular situation.” Update: Conference vs. Unconference [...]

February 1st, 2007 at 7:59 am
links for 2007-02-05 at Wired Gecko
[...] Conference vs. Unconference - C. David Gammel, High Context Consulting » Blog Archive » Comparison of a conference versus an unconference (tags: unconference article blogging web2.0 conference) [...]

February 5th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Unconference Motivation of Open Content Authors
[...] Teemu Arina proposed this idea to Jarmo Viteli and the organizing commitee of ITK07. The basic idea is to have an empty track where the conference visitiors can setup their own agenda. Often you have good ideas at the conference, not before the conference, so it is a kind of user driven conference with ad hoc meetings. Also there is much more brain in the audience than on stage, so why not give the people a more interactive format? There is quite a lot of information about “unconferences” on the Web, they form a subcategory of “large group didactics”. The most prominent method probably is Open Space and also World Café. To get more info on this, read the Unconference Blog, there is a Wikipedia article with a lot of other links, also look at Why unconferences are Fun conferences for more insight. [...]

May 16th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
khan_sultan
Great comparison. Infact even the whole Web2.0 concepts are very similar to the underlying fundamental principles of unconferences.

we can even say that unconferences are the web2.0 version of conferences

here is a list of similarities between web2.0 & unconferences

http://shahnawazkhan.wordpress.com/2007/12/25/whats-similar-between-the-concepts-and-principles-behind-web20-and-unconferences/

December 27th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Manish Kutaula
heres some more:

Exact time to start/Whenever you think..that is the right time to start.

Schedule/List of talks

November 25th, 2008 at 2:53 pm