I commented extensively on Skippy's post about ELTU - so extensively, in fact, that it seems worthwhile making it into its own posting. I hope it doesn't come across as overly critical of the work that folks did on the FooCampApache, or whatever it was called, that was done at ApacheCon in Amsterdam earlier this year. I have to admit, I simply don't get the concept, and didn't get much out of it. But almost everybody else that I talked to about it said that they loved it, and that it was a raging success. Maybe I've just been attending traditional tech conferences for too long.
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I've been fairly skeptical of the entire concept of unconferences, for a number of reasons.
The main one, of course, is that I've never seen it done in such a way that I personally found to be useful. It seemed like a lot of people waiting around for something to happen, and then saying how successful and energized it had been, when nothing happened. Seemed like a huge waste of time and floor space.
The other one is that I would personally be very reluctant to send an employee to a conference (whatever cool or hip meta-foo-bar-un label was put on it) when I couldn't tell what, if anything, they might get out of it. Perhaps if they were closer to home, that would be less of an issue, but being so isolated from the tech centers of the country, these things are never here.
I've been involved in a number of local tech user groups, and several of them eventually devolved into a situation where a very small subset of the group had to come up with topics each week/month in order to keep the group functioning. It strikes me as highly improbable that a room full of random strangers will spontaneously organize itself into useful conversation - primarily because I've never seen it happen.
We did an unconference at ApacheCon this year, and other than a lengthy argument over whether it was a *camp or a foo-something or bar-something-else or unconference, I never saw much discussion about how to actually do it effectively. There seemed to be a perception that if you just have a room, Good Things Will Happen. This was not my experience. What I saw was people giving talks that were rather less well prepared than they would be at a "real" conference, because they somehow expected discussion to pick up ... which it didn't.
Turns out, however, that we did most of the things wrong that you (See Skippy's post) point out. Closed doors. Separate small rooms. Designated speakers. Pre-determined schedule with not much flexibility for later change. Specific facilitators who seemed to feel the need to instruct us on How Things Should Be Done.
One of these days, I'd really like to attend an event like this that is well done, so that I can observe it being done, at a conference for which *I* am not responsible.
On the other hand, maybe it *was* well done, and I'm just so steeped in the formal conference mindset that I can't see it.
BarCapPhilly was one of the most successful and authentic camp-style events I've been to. The day starts with no agenda, tons of people, and a handful of empty rooms. Some people come with their own ideas on what to talk about, and things just fall into place.
I guarantee there's more planning to the event than that, but I think a key to making it work is a community that has an "own it" attitude; the concept that an idea that you don't share is impotent, and the only person who's going to share your own ideas is you.
By extension, these types of conferences are really what you yourself make of them. If you enter them with the perception that they're not for you, or if you aren't there to participate and help build the discussion, then of course you're not going to benefit. I can imagine the difficulty of a first-time attendee getting this concept if not prepared for it in advance. But if you instead enter the event with an attitude of "I'm going to make this happen", you're much more likely to appreciate the results.
Hi!
We're attempting to do this on a bit larger scale with Open Source Bridge (opensourcebridge.org). Our conference is three days long - two days of typical sessions (opensourcebridge.org/sessions) (the schedule for which we'll be announcing Real Soon Now) and then an entire day of unconference on Friday.
We're really excited about it -- most conferences schedule the unconference along side regular sessions. It's nearly impossible to compete with that, IMO, for many of the reasons you mentioned. People like knowing what they're getting in to, and unconferences are a bit uncomfortable if you've never experienced one (or had a bad experience before!).
Many things that we're doing are an experiment, so we'll let you know how it goes :)
So, we're trying to help people get over that by offering a training session on Thursday evening before the unconference on Friday. We'll be doing 5-minute lightning talks, and scheduling them unconference style with anyone who wants to see how we organize these in Portland.
-selena