Time for an Unmeeting?

Thank you to all who have taken the time to comment about the Skitch posting. An interesting side conversation developed that mentioned the idea of setting aside time to meet to share resources like Skitch.

This made me think of several past conversations that support this idea.

The King and Four Queens hd

What We Do Is Secret movie download

Brian Bridges has enthusiastically shared the concept of an unconference. Scott Skidmore has requested some conference rooms to be set aside for discussions to follow presentations.

What Dreams May Come trailer

Dean Shareski has discussed backwards conference scheduling on his blog. Mark Jeffery has shared his vision for collaboration among technology coaches. Flirting with Disaster the movie

Perhaps it is time to move forward with these ideas.

Brian’s experience with unconferences is the concept of planning a conference without a schedule of sessions. At the opening of the conference, attendees briefly share resources or ideas. Then the attendees decide which resources or ideas they would like to explore further and the unconference sessions are scheduled based upon interest. In a similar vein, Scott has suggested that conferences plan a few empty rooms that can be used by attendees who would like to discuss resources or ideas that they discovered at presentations.

While attending FETC, Dean blogged that the scheduling of in-depth pre-conference workshops followed by short concurrent sessions was backwards.

• Draculas Guest video

He thought it made more sense to get an overview of a topic during a concurrent session so that a better decision could be made about which in-depth workshop to attend. Mark has wanted to grow a tech coach’s network so that those who are working with teachers to integrate technology have time to develop more resources.

The Doctor film

Barabba video

All of these discussions and the comments received here point to a need for time simply to get together and share.

• Christmas with the Kranks buy

Revolver release So, I’m proposing that we look at our calendars and schedule a regular date once a month or every other month for an unmeeting. Our agendas for unmeetings would be first to start with questions from attendees (eg. Does anyone have a suggestion/resource to solve this problem?) The rest of the time would be spent sharing resources and strategies picked up since the last unmeeting. Does the last Thursday of April work for you for our first unmeeting?

Photo: Online Community Unconference by libraryman on flickr