Greetings All San Andreas Chapter Members -
At the SLA Leadership Conference last week the concept
of the "Unconference" was bandied about and I was clueless. Perhaps you
have been privy to this new concept on collective learning. But if not,
the following item that was posted to the Information Futurists Caucus
distribution list (of SLA) may be of interest.
Leslie R.
Fisher
2009 President, San Andreas Chapter
SLA
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By Iris
Yesterday an
enlightening thing happened in the comments on a blog post by Steve
Lawson (a post which is positively ancient in blog
years, by the way). Up until yesterday, I'd rather naively
thought that even though the terms "unconference" and "library
camp" are still in their toddlerhood, people generally had a
common understanding of what those terms mean. In my head,
this common definition went something like this: An informal,
free or low cost, loosely structured gathering at which people
share knowledge with each other. I would hear "unconference"
and have an image of people gathering at the beginning of the
day to figure out what they wanted to learn that day and which
of them could lead sessions on those agreed-on
topics.
Now I see that people may not, in fact, have a
common understanding of the term "unconference." The comments
on Steve's post point to at least three different
interpretations: Unconferences are loosely structured
conferences, Unconferences are grassroots gatherings, and
Unconferences are a genre rather than a format. Here's what I
mean...
- Unconferences
as loosely structured conferences
If you
think of a conference, you know that there are all kinds of
logistics that go into pulling one of those things off, most
of which depend to a large degree on how many people you
want to attend. Everything from spaces to staffing to the
number of speakers to the relative rock-start status of your
speakers to the rigidity of the schedule has to be geared
toward attracting and handling your target audience. If you
plan for 100 people and only 40 show up, that's a huge waste
of capital. Bring this mindset to an unconference and you
end up with less worry about rock-star speakers (though a
few recent unconferences have had Big Names give keynote
addresses), but most of the same issues remain your primary
concern. The major thing that changes, then, is that the
unconference organizers spend little to no time planning out
sessions topics, leaving that up to the attendees.
- Unconferences
as grassroots gatherings
Other
people, while still having to deal with logistics,
consciously force those logistics into the background of the
event. They still need space and people, obviously, but if
they plan for 100 and 40 show up, those 40 might not even
notice that you had enough room for more than twice their
number. Those 40 would gather, decide what they want to
learn and which of them can facilitate that learning, and
then learn it, usually for free (with the space and other
necessities paid for by donors or sponsors).
- Unconferences
as a genre rather than a format
Still
others (myself included) think of unconferences as a genre
of gathering which may or may not include a keynote address,
may or may not charge a small fee, and may or may not have
an over-arching theme. This genre places the emphasis on
attendee-driven content, but other than that, it no more
dictates the size or cost or logistical complexity than does
the parent term "conference." As Steve says, an unconference
"can be whatever the attendees decide it is" (citation).
Luckily, the
solution to all the muddled assumptions is transparency. So if
I see an unconference coming up, and I see that it will charge
me a small fee and what
that fee will go towards, I can make my own
decisions about the value of that unconference in my life. If
I see that it will be of the loosely-structured-conference
variety, and I'm ok with that, that's great. If I see that
it'll be a completely unstructured day of serendipitous
learning with other librarians, and I'm ok with that, that's
great too. After all, not all conferences are like ALA Annual,
so why must all unconferences be as diametrically opposed to
Annual as possible? | | |
