How we do an unconference

What is an unconference?

• Conference: pre-planned by an "elite" program committee
• Conference: large amount of preparation, often minimum threshold to contribute
• Unconference: provide tools for participants to drive the program more dynamically than usual.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference

Why are we doing an unconference?

• Easier for us!
• More dynamic, especially for a small group.
• We want real ideas and discussions. Advance planning by a program committee doesn't match that too well because it biases towards planned events.
• This isn't a "pure" unconference
  • We have some pre-scheduling
  • But we will try to make it dynamic as well

Preparation

• Attendees can suggest sessions or ideas or even requests for sessions in advance
  • Attendees can vote on what they would like to see
  • … and help other attendees develop their sessions, or join up to co-present
• Organizers try to highlight a few sessions and produce an initial schedule.
• All session proposals are copied into the unconference HackMD before the event

During the event

• Attend sessions and discuss
• When you get an idea for something else to discuss or present, propose it!
  • Mention it where relevant: HackMD discussion of the current session
  • In the main unconference HackMD, in the "Proposed sessions" section.
• Vote up sessions you would like to attend with "+1" in the HackMD right after the session proposal.
• Organizers will try to keep track of this and periodically announce upcoming events and breakout room assignments
  • But you can also always follow the HackMD for the latest status.
  • Or you can grab a breakout room at any time. HackMD can be used to try to attract people to it.

Think of this as "stick notes on a wall", which is used in in-person unconferences. A sticky note is a proposal, people add notes and occassionally they get arranged into sessions, like this:
Image via Wikipedia:Unconference.

For sessions

• Realize that there are a wide variety of people attending and try to spend some time making sure everyone has a chance to talk
• Keep good HackMD notes, since not everyone who is interested can attend each session. You might even get some contributors who are in another session but watching your HackMD.

Notes

• In other unconferences, these sessions may be directly scheduled into slots.
  • Here, proposals can be added at any moment but organizers try to keep things organized.
• We don't have a limit on number of breakout rooms (well, 50), but we want to have enough people at each session.
• Anarchy vs democracy vs authororitarianism
  • Perhaps an ideal world is where everything comes from attendees
  • But we think that we need some organizers benevolently guiding the program to make it work well, for example a few pre-planned sessions.
  • Perhaps we need less of this once we become more comfortable with the format.

To-do

• The schedule on the website says to look at HackMD for the latest assignments, etc.
• "check-in" sessions in main room added to schedule for use with summaries and announcing upcoming sessions.
• Main HackMD has sections for "Current schedule" and "Proposed sessions"
• Proposals transferred from issues into HackMD (linked to issues for ideas)
• Session chair knows what to do during the "check-in" sessions