Hi! I just wanted to advertise the form of an unconference a bit more for EuroPython as this was also mentioned at the last IRC meeting. I am also just back from a Barcamp (one form of an unconference) and as I see this form as a great way to get more communication going I wanted to desribe it for those who don't know it.
We also had one 57 years old school teacher at the Barcamp (his first) who was really excited and talked about a completely different way of learning and his next task would now be to revolutionize the german education system ;-) So what is an unconference? Basically there are no fixed talks, keynotes, training and the like but in the beginning there is just a couple of rooms. Everybody is invited to attend and it does not cost anything (but you have to sign yourself up on the wiki to help planning and costs are handled via sponsors). Everybody at an unconference is a participant, there are no spectators. This means that everybody is invited to do a session or to blog about it, film it, podcast it, shoot photos and spread them. A barcamp usually (at least here) starts with an introductionary round. Everybody says who he is and gives 3 tags about him/herself (like plone,zope,twisted). The 3-tags things is quite good if there are many people around. If it's just 20 it can be more verbose of course. Then the session presentations happen. Everybody can propose a topic to talk about. This can be some talk but even better would be some discussion round where maybe an introduction happens but then everybody adds their opinions/ideas/thoughts to it. The result can then be blogged about again. We had a lot of these at the last barcamp and it was great to have these conversations going. If you propose a session you also ask how many people are interested and choose the right sized room accordingly. We had a wall with some table on it, having sheets of paper with room names on the top and having timeslots at downwards. You then take a sheet of paper and just place it at the room and the time you want to use. Here an example: http://flickr.com/photos/dittes/2337605649/ So this in basic words is a barcamp/unconference. It's similar to Open Spaces as we already have them at EP but I think it would be good if those wouldn't compete with lightning talks as they usually do. Instead I think it would be nice to have 1 day or so just unconference style. To me esp. sessions with more discussions make usually more sense than those normal talks. It seems more collaborative. Additionally they happen in smaller groups and thus maybe the barrier is also lower to propose a session than to do a talk (even lightning talk in front of 300 people). One problem might be that people are not used to that form. When you come to a normal conference you are not thinking about doing your own session so the question might be how many sessions we get in the beginning. It's even that way at barcamps, which are usually 2 days. New people usually are a bit shy but might signup for session on day 2 when they know more how it works. It's even possible to just ask a question in a session btw. So no knowledge is required ;-) We also had a talk at the barcamp about session length. They have been 30 mins plus 15 mins changing time but that felt too short for many people, esp. if you give an introduction to some topic and then discuss it. So on day 2 it was raised to 45+15 which seemed better. 1 hr slots are also easier to remember time-wise. It was also argued though that you also have been able to reserve 2 slots then. But for the normal conference program people maybe should be able to choose a length. So I just wanted to make it a bit clearer in case not everybody knows what we are talking about. I think experimenting with something like this would definitely be great as after attending barcamps those normal conferences feel more and more like dinosaurs ;-) (to me at least). Some links: http://barcamp.org/ (with videos) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp -- Christian -- Christian Scholz video blog: http://comlounge.tv COM.lounge blog: http://mrtopf.de/blog Luetticher Strasse 10 Skype: HerrTopf 52064 Aachen Homepage: http://comlounge.net Tel: +49 241 400 730 0 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax: +49 241 979 00 850 IRC: MrTopf, Tao_T connect with me: http://mrtopf.de/connect _______________________________________________ Europython-improve mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython-improve
