Had my first experience of an unconference this weekend. An interesting event, although not as different to a traditional conference as I was expecting.

Session at Unsheffield (Creative Commons photo by James Urquhart)

For those unfamiliar with the concept of an unconference, I refer you to Wikipedia's excellent definition. Unsheffield was based around the theme of 'Future users of cool technology' - focusing on the users, rather than the technology. Pretty cool. Plus, it was free to attend - really cool.

Format of the event

On Friday the event was kicked off with a selection of 'stimulus' talks which were intended to get people thinking about the theme of the conference. These used a '20:20' format - twenty slides, displayed for twenty seconds each (on a timer). Some of the speakers coped with this format better than others, but on the whole it was very good - it forced the speakers to be direct and 'to the point'. The only downside of this format was that there was no opportunity for discussion or questions after the talks, which felt a little odd.

The rest of the conference consisted of participant-generated sessions. Anyone could suggest and run a session on any subject they wanted to. This led to a wide variety of interesting topics - from some really cool stuff on Arduino, to a discussion on 'turning voyeurs into participants' (give them free cookies), to astronomy for geeks. The real strength of the unconference format, however, is that sessions can be generated on the spur of the moment, as a result of random conversations and ideas.

I wasn't able to attend on Saturday, which was a real shame - as it seemed like many of the most interesting sessions took place on that day. I'm particularly disappointed that I didn't get to Michael Heap's JQuery presentation. The Sunday sessions definitely had a slightly more hung-over feel to them. But they were also a lot of fun, and I found myself able to get involved in several discussions throughout the day. The people there were genuinely very warm and friendly, and definitely Geeks with a capital 'G'.

Enjoying a session (Creative Commons photo by Neil Crosby)

Some thoughts...

The conference website was really an integral part of the whole event - it was great that volunteers were there to blog everything that happened at the sessions, but it would be even more awesome if the site was more of a wiki than a blog - after all, the whole point of an unconference is getting everyone involved. It would be great if everyone could get involved in creating online content too. (A forum isn't a flexible enough structure for that, in my opinion).

It was a little bit intimidating for first-time unconference attendees. I got the feeling that everyone else there knew other people at the conference, and this made it feel a little difficult to get involved at the beginning.

Would I go back again?

Absolutely yes! I got lots out of the sessions, and I met some very interesting people. I'm sure I will be much better prepared to get even more out of the event next time. I noticed that a number of people at Unsheffield seem to be serial barcamp/unconference participants, and I can certainly see why!