Wiki? Twitter? Unconference? Welcome to 'meetings 2.0'

By now, everybody has used, successfully or not, one of the many active social networking platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn. While these platforms have not put an end to traditional face-to-face networking, they certainly absorb more of the time of working people who are looking for clients, partners or their next job. The beauty of discussing and networking online lies in part in the freedom to decide on when to interact, what to say and when to stop. The social rules are clearly different when you are asking for a connection through email than when you are approaching an unknown person at a function.

As making contacts and connecting people is at the heart of our operations, I am always curious to learn more about new ways to share ideas and contacts in groups. Therefore, with great expectations, I signed up for an “unconference” on innovation a couple weeks ago. I was not sure what the “un” meant, but I soon realized that the techies who put the conference together were keen to use the meeting (I don’t think the term ‘unmeeting’ has reached the glossary of web-oriented crowds) as a test bed for new “social” technologies. The email confirmation did not come with an agenda attached or a list of participants. Instead, it directed me to create an online profile where I could and create tags to highlight my expertise and interests. A wiki also served as a virtual bulletin board allowing participants to brainstorm topics and showcase their technologies ahead of the event. All these participatory mechanisms were designed to offer each participant the chance to craft some parts of the agenda. At the first session, a moderator invited everybody to suggest a session topic. Session leaders were responsible for starting the discussion, but there were no rules on how the group dynamic should proceed. Everyone was encouraged to contribute and “bumble bees”, who roam freely from session to session, were welcome.

That “unconference” in Boston sold out with just over 300 people. All the preparation and the social technologies could not address the limits of the physical world. There was quite a bit of confusion when sessions started to take shape, and a lot of people were talking at the same time. Also, some of the rooms could not accommodate all the people who were interested.

Apart from these small problems, I found the experience very successful. The sessions provided opportunities to sit down and exchange views with many different people in a short space of time. And I have to admit that I also enjoyed leaving a session before the end to join another one. I also tried to follow several sessions in parallel. How did I do that? Easy, I just surfed the Twitter channel of the conference… but that would be too long to explain.