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10 September 2008

Unconferencing

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My life as a producer and consumer of B2B events has its moments. Some are painful, tiring and awkward, some enlightening, inspiring and rewarding. It's good then to be presented with something fresh and new, which I'm hopeful that next month's Be2Camp will prove to be. It's billed as an unconference, which I suppose means that it's trying to move away from the established norms of such events - bloke or lass stands in front of crowd and spouts forth, issuing his definitive view of the world while we the audience meekly sit, try to stay awake and take a few notes.

I'm not dismissing such events, not least as my company organises quite a few of them. It's just that I'm increasingly of the view that there are different ways to organise and structure a day out of the office for busy professionals. In the same way as traditional media such as newspapers and magazines are developing (from content offered on high to an audience to the rise of user-generated content via the web) so are events. My experience at the Green Monday event this week, where it was as much about your input as content offered from speakers, was a case in point.
It also seems obvious that the subject matter of Be2Camp, exploring web 2.0 in the built environment, should lend itself so well to a much looser and inclusive structure. Attendees (it's on Friday 10 October at the Building Centre in central London) are being encouraged to get as involved as possible with the agenda and subjects up for discussion as possible. And it seems to be shaping up pretty well - there's some keynotes on freeing up data and the death of email (hear hear) as well as quite a strong green angle to the agenda, including the web and post occupation evaluation.
I met with one of the unconferencing men in chief Paul Wilkinson (he dreamt it up with fellow blogger Martin Brown) last month and spoke with him last night to nail down a few ways I can help out and contribute. One is to post on interesting developments and additions to the event over the coming weeks. The second is to prepare a presentation with the working title of From Content to Community for the communication and connection stream of the day's proceedings. I think there are also some interesting ways we can cover the event, including live (lo-cost) video coverage.

Posted by on 10 September 2008 in Events |

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