ArbCamp
I'm at ArbCamp '08, an Unconference in downtown Ann Arbor. I suggested a talk on "Organizing Conferences", so I added it to the board. That discussion got fourteen people plus bystanders. A lot of you know Mark Ramm, the Python coder behind TurboGears, and he was an organizer of ArbCamp. He said it took four lunches, spaced a month apart, for about six people to create this event.
The idea of an Unconference is to get people together, with no schedule, based on a shared concern. No guests of honor, and no admission fee, seem to be unspoken rules of many of these events. Post big signs reading "A", "B", "C", and so on to separate your space into discussion areas with whiteboards and markers. (Furniture is not required.) You put up a big grid with columns A, B, C, etc, and rows for the half-hour timeslots. At the start, anyone may festoon the grid with a big sticky page on which they wrote their suggested topic of discussion. At the time of the discussion you write the topic on the top of the whiteboard in section A or wherever it is. We also have stickers on our badges indicating interests (Mine are Linux, Apple, Graphic Design, Audio, Social Networking, E-commerce).
The rules of an Unconference are:
1. Whoever is here are the right people.
2. Whatever happened was the right thing to happen.
3. If you're bored, you are REQUIRED to get up and leave and find a different session or someone else to talk to.
So at an Unconference you are responsible for your own learning. ArbCamp's shared concern is making Ann Arbor a hot spot for exciting geekiness.
The first big rush of attendance had this place really crowded. It's 250 people on the top floor of Cottage Inn Pizza. But pretty soon most of them were compelled by Rule Three to leave the Unconference, leaving only the right people (by definition-- see Rule One). This is as it should be (see Rule Two).
Now I have been invited to a session about an alternate reality game they do around here every once in a while.
Comments
le-bebna-kamni on Dec. 19, 2008 5:31 PM
Matt, you always get invited to the cool kids table. ;P
users on Dec. 20, 2008 2:16 PM
Alas, I found out about this too late... I'd love to go to the next one, though :)
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