Johannes has volunteered to research Penguin Day and interview Chris Messina. We can help him by contributing questions for his interview.
Johannes also has responded to my recent email with some very keen observations. I list them below.
The size of the unconference.This leads to two points - does the model work as effectively with 200 as with 20? Harrison Owen would say yes, but of course he wants to sell his idea. I heard that the founders of BarCamp are not satisfied with BarCamps becoming too huge, going back to "more camps, less people". The interview with Chris Brogan suggests a similar trend for PodCamp.
The size also touches a second point - the huge number of unconferences. Is this a way of finding niches, therefore getting more focused and controlling the number of people participating? Or is it just a sign that everybody wants to do unconferences and nobody talks to each other? And which of the unconferences will survive, in the end? Which ones will become corporate?
Maybe we should put together something like a questionaire for the organizers (or, to be exact, the "first generation organizers") where we ask things that we can chart:
"what is the ideal number of people participating?"
"do you believe that uconferences can become corporate?"
"in which way do you want your unconference to develop -- more camps and less people or more people in bigger gatherings?"
"do you think your unconference would work in the virtual world - what would be the technical premises for that?"
"have we seen the peak of the phenomenom yet, or will there be more unconferences come up - and when is it too much?"
If we make it standardised, we can draw conclusions and see trends that might develop.
Johannes' list of questions above is a good start. Let's come up with half a dozen more, identify people we would like to ask these questions, and send it away, so we will have answers around the 15th.
He also suggests, for the sake of balance and a truly scientific approach, that we find critics of unconferences and found out from them why they think the concept if flawed or won't work or not good generally for disseminating information. Another approach to test the validity of the concept would be to ask somebody like a behavioral psychologist or sociologist who can tell us something about self-organising communication.
And, finally, it would be nice to hear from someone who runs real conferences about why he or she does not use the unconference model for their purpose. If we had more time, we could even set up a discussion between someone who does unconferences and someone who does a normal one - so the exchange of arguments would float all by itself.
We need everybody's help with this. So, pitch in where you can and put your reporting on the reporting page.
Thanks, Johannes.
Chris
