Ben Fletcher

Put simply, the best unconference I’ve attended so far!

The idea behind unconferences is best explained by a collaborative “Conference vs. Unconference” table here:

http://www.highcontext.com/hcarchives/2005/11/18/conference-vs-unconference/

such as “content planning” versus “content facilitation”, “wisdom of experts” versus “wisdom of crowds”, “panels” versus “conversations”. “best practices” versus “practicing”. “directive methods” versus “participatory methods”, and many more.  Have a look.

Laura Bergells explained her version of how the two differ here:

http://www.maniactive.com/states/2008/08/unconference-versus-conference.html

such as “A carefully set agenda. Slick brochures. Ads in trade journals. Secure web page sign up. Pricey.” versus “No set agenda. Word of Mouth spread. Wikis and FaceBook pages for sign-ups. Low- to no-cost sign up.”

A characteristic I’ve heard a lot of unconferences is that they are run on shoe-string budgets.  Barcamp 7 ran from Saturday 9.30am through to Sunday 4pm – overnight stay including.  How much did I spend?  0p.  How much did I spend on accommodation?  0p (some of us slept in the building in sleeping bags).  How much were the expenses for my employer?  0p.  Where did the budget come from?  From these:

Barcamp 7 Sponsors by Andy Piper

who sponsored the event.  What’s the average sponsorship?  About £500.  For a Barcamp, what would the average budget be?  About £2,500.  How much did Barcamp London 7 cost?  I don’t know.

Quality

That leaves the all-important question: with a shoe-string budget, how could the quality be so high?  I’d take a look at this stream of photos from Flickr:

and at the timetable of the talks for Saturday:

http://tommorris.org/files/barcamp_saturday.html

and at the list of participants, each of which was to start 1 or 2 sessions:

http://www.barcamplondon.org/whos-coming/

a number of who are from major firms who have caught the bug – IBM, Google, Guardian, Papal, lastFM, The Times, LastMinute, CloudMap, Nokia…

1-way sessions?

Was the sessions all 1-way?  With a Q&A towards the end?  This was my main concern, but, as it turned out, the sessions were very much varied!

• some people arrived, discussed, and THEN came up with new topics… these topics were what to become some of the best sessions!
• collaborative sessions: where people all collaborated on a topic, e.g.:
  non-relational database alternatives through Etherpad.com;
• remote participants: where people from outside Barcamp could participate, live, in a session, e.g.:
  “Teach Me How to Run a Barcamp”, with real-time involvement from my Twitter followers who could not attend at the Barcamp, who could add questions to a real-time collaborative “notepad” that was projected in the session; and sugest answers.
• backchannels: where people Tweet their reactions real-time during a session, and discuss amongst themselves (and the speaker may get involved too), e.g.:
  “this Google wave…”
• participant-driven sessions: participants would Tweet thoughts and indeed questions, other participants would see them and run sessions about them, e.g.:
• lallyd: just seen that someone @ #bcl7 did a BSL session, would love to know who and how it went!
  bjfletcher: @lallyd i ran the BSL session.. went really well! i’m keen to run a barcamp for deaf people – mark this tweet, it’s going to be a hit! #bcl7
  oliciv: @bjfletcher Host a session tomorrow “Teach me how to run a Barcamp”
  bjfletcher: @oliciv that’s a brilliant suggestion, thanks! i’ve added “teach me how to run a barcamp” for 2.30pm tomorrow before the autism talk #bcl7
  

From a Deaf/BSL point of view

Some experiences and thoughts:

• I met some people who actually knew some BSL, and therefore had some deaf/BSL awareness;
• I met some people with vision issues, one ran a session about tunnel vision;
• I found the sessions to be more accessible that what would have been in conferences (rather than unconferences), due to the following:
• there are live “backchannels”, with which I can more or less get a feeling of what people are thinking;
  the sessions last only 20 minute, and there are about 8 sessions in each time slot, meaning:
• normally there are sessions which are more accessible than others – e.g., live demonstrations, “try it out” (e.g., augmented glasses), lots of slides (e.g., Andy Piper)… be smart and pick one that’s the most accessible;
• if I don’t like it, I’ll still be able to follow other sessions by accessing their slides over the ‘net and following their backchannels and Twitter #bcl7 (Barcamp London 7 hashtag) stream;
• I can plan which session to go to next by talking to the session proposers directly, asking them if it’ll be visual or all-waffle;
• people are free to leave halfway a session, recharge, ready for next session.
• participants are equal, and often are accessible through social networking tools such as Twitter, and I can easily ask them questions… plus they’re far more approachable given that we’re all present thoroughout the weekend including overnight.
• the community spirit makes it easier to ask… I can, e.g., ask on Twitter “what was that on the last slide?”, the community-driven bunch of campers would often be delighted to talk about them
• unconferences rely on collaborative technologies (wiki, for example) and therefore are supportive of social networking tools to share knowledge… and use them NOW AND THERE, instead of after;
• sessions often are highly visible and creative, unusually for a “conference” is that I didn’t feel tired afterwards

A question I had before the Barcamp London 7 event was that, given that this wasn’t a conference with a large budget, how could we arrange communication support?

I spent Saturday without an interpreter, and Sunday with an interpreter.  I feel I learnt just as much in both days.  Given the following:

1. no Barcamp experience;
2. Barcamp experience with no interpreter;
3. Barcamp experience with interpreter.

I’d always choose 2 and 3.  With 2, this was my opportunity to educate the community about BSL and look at ways for Barcamp to be more inclusive (I’ve listed some above, real-time collaborative tools, backchannels, emphasis on variety on session style, etc.) and fun!

Caveat: Barcamps that are run for non-technical people I suspect won’t do just as well.  The fact that Barcamp London 7 was full of savvy, very smart technical campers, as this post I hope has illustrated, helped.

To sign this post off with, here’s a brilliant piece of result from the weekend:

http://bf.etherpad.com/1

Watch this space!