Talk:Unconference

FooCamp
FooCamp imo is not an Unconference. The "audience" is comprised of a selected body of participants who adhere to certain criteria. See Tim O'Reilly's description of the selection process at http://gigaom.com/2005/08/16/foocampfighting/#comment-8833 -- martind 217.83.125.152 16:04, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Disconnect between deeds and words.
Look at the definition of what an "unconference" is, at the head of the article: ...a conference where the content of the meeting is driven and created by the participants rather than by a single organizer.

FOO Camp is an invitation-only event. Someone issues those invitations. That someone would be a single organizer. Thus, FOO Camp is not an unconference -- the content is pre-determined, however implicitly, through O'Reilly, in the process of whom to invite or not invite.

Any putative dispute between O'Reilly and Winer isn't relevant. Any invitation-only event, regardless of vendor or sponsor, falls outside the definition. If FOO Camp was open to the public, and its content set solely by the participants who happened to show up, it would fall into the definition. I particularly note that O'Reilly itself does not use the term "unconference" in its own material about FOO Camp ( see http://wiki.oreillynet.com/foocamp05/index.cgi, the most recent example).

Hijacking an article for language better suited to a marketing brochure and hype for a particular vendor (seemingly against that vendor's wishes) doesn't do a general reader any good. The material about FOO Camp and "Open Space Technology" almost certainly belongs in the existing articles about those two terms, and not cluttering up this specific article.

Hal 21:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I've changed the description of Foo Camp to outline some of the controversy surrounding the event. Still not perfect, but better than before. -- martind 84.190.184.108 13:14, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe the primary and substative definition of "unconference" is the participant-driven nature. What does invite-only have to do with that, when the participants still define what is discussed? --Gstein 06:35, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Gstein: somewhat true, the "participant-driven nature" is part of FooCamp. But the core idea behind unconferences, it seems, is to remove barriers of entry for all participants. That's what makes it such a powerful concept; that the discussion is more likely to take a new paths, because suddenly "new" people can become part of the discussion. In my interpretation of the unconference concept in its "pure" form, the only barrier of entry should be the motivation of potential participants, not an arbitrary and external selection process. (But please post if your opinions on this differ!) -- martind 217.83.103.41 16:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Your point of view would label FOSDEM and FISL as "unconferences" simply because those are open to all comers (free of charge). But that is *totally* wrong. Those are conferences pure and simple: prepared talks, discussion panels, tutorials, ... the whole works. The defining factor of an "unconference" is removing all those historical notions -- put the agenda and format in the hands of the participants. --Gstein 02:59, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Too many examples
There are too many links in the examples section. It seems that every *Camp has got a link down there. I suggest keeping only a few popular ones, maybe BarCamp and a couple others. Also, since FOO Camp is not an unconference, it should be taken out of the examples section. --Siddhi 06:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Siddhi (talk • contribs) 05:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC).
 * Since there have been no objections, I'm going ahead with the edit --Siddhi 05:55, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Organization matter
Does the Penguin Talk mention belong in the intro? Also the last sentence in the history section about the moving microphone looks like it belongs in most any other place on the page. Amyloo 13:27, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. Both the lines can be cleaned up and moved to someplace more suitable, or even removed --Siddhi 17:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like an advert (Rewrite needed)
"Open Space Technology is an energizing and emergent way to organize an agenda for a conference." (my emphasis)... I don't know enough on the subject to say, but this sounds rather like an advert, and doesn't really tell me anything... EAi 14:05, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The whole Open Space thing seems out of place here. All I can see is that it appears to be _one_ method of running an unconference. So that's the only thing that should be mentioned here unless it is the _main_ method used. There is a whole article about that methodology, so I don't see any reason to repeat it here.
 * However, virtually the whole methodology section will be gone when this is deleted and the article reduced to a minor stub. So it would be preferable to rewrite the article to be more general - unfortunately I don't have a vast knowledge in unconferences... Averell (talk) 11:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I attempted the desired rewrite, having stumbled across this article and had the same impression, that it sounded like a big ad for Open Space Technology and their particular model of what an unconference is. 163.1.74.1 (talk) 12:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC) (\his comment made by Betsythedevine, who is just not signed in on this Oxford computer)

Speedy deletion
I was recently deleted and accused of spamming. Ok i did not know I cannot link to a website I was affiliated with.

With my deletion several other links, very precious to the development of the subject, where deleted.

Such articles have helped me a lot in understanding the subject as a first timer even if from external resources.

I feel that there is a tendency in event management related subject in speedy deleting all the links, instead of integrating what those links suggest.

Please think about how to change the subject and expand it before erasing sistematically links that are covering a clear deficit of the article.

Again I don't care if you delete the webistes which I am affiliated with but there has been a complete deletion of external links which makes me think that there are other interests here and and an uncontrollable desire of not developing the subjects even further.

There is maybe why the articles are very poor and not comprehensive
 * It would be great if you could sign you comments. --Paxuscalta (talk) 23:23, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It would also be great if you could a diff to the edit that upsets you. When I look back (as far as march), I see a single link that was "disputed" (except some spam from turkish sites) - so we have no idea what you are talking about... Averell (talk) 14:24, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Merge this and Open Space Technology
This article and Open Space Technology suffer from quality problems. If we merged them, they'd have more contributors and might shake their ad-like problems. Gronky (talk) 10:55, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Open space technology is just one kind of unconference. Unconfernece is a term that covers many different formats/methods (like world cafe, speed geeking, future search). The main quality of them being that they are participant drive. what do you suggest to improve the quality of the article? Kaliya 9:08, 23 July 2009 (PDT)
 * Nothing grave, but it's pretty thin on information, kinda giving a paragraph-ised list of conferences and dates, then then giving a straight list of conference types. A risk with list-like articles is that passers-by just keep adding to the list and it gets in a rut.  Meanwhile, the Open Space Technology article has loads of text, but it's ad-like, clearly lacking critical thought.  I'm not proposing a merge (I won't add tags), but it's an path to consider. Gronky (talk) 22:47, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The unconference is a real thing that has been inspiring people since 1998. It is outrageous that this article has been repeatedly edited to turn it into essentially an ad for Open Space Technology. It needs a complete rewrite, not a merge into the article of the offenders. HouseOfChange (talk) 10:00, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Whence the name?
Erm, I don't get the point of the name "unconference". Is it supposed to be a play on "unconventional" and "conference"? Or is it merely a conference, that's not really a conference (whatever it's supposed to be then)? Maikel (talk) 15:49, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

This Article Needs to be Completely Rewritten
I agree with the previous commenters who don't like this article. I never heard of unconferences until this week, so naturally I searched Wikipedia. All I learned is that they are supposed to be different from most meetings. Not very enlightening. I checked out each of the links in the section "Styles of facilitation"; IMHO few, if any, of them adhere to Wikipedia standards -- they are full of praise for the subject of the article (only one discusses disadvantages or failures) -- they make repeated mention of the founders of the techniques -- some are blatant advertisements. Some seem to have little relevance to meetings. Wikipedia's readers expect much better. Thanks for wasting my time. — Solo Owl (talk) 04:08, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I tried to clarify the lead and removed some not-helpful see also links. This article seems to silt up with cruft unless tended. betsythedevine (talk) 05:01, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Ooh, fast work. I'm impressed. If I remember right, in removing nominal group technique, you removed the only one that discusses the limitations of the method, and the only one that mentions outright failures (but then it seems to be highly controlled by the facilitators, and need not require an actual meeting, so I can see that it is not covered by what y'all mean by unconference). — Solo Owl (talk) 20:04, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I did a quick Google for "unconference failure" but came up with nothing useful. It seems obvious that unconferences are suited to only a subset of the kinds of things conferences are used for, and an even smaller subset of things that meetings are used for. If you know any WP:RS that talks about the merits of conferences versus unconferences, or other good sources of material on this topic, please edit the article yourself. I ended up with this on my watchlist not because I'm a booster of the unconference model but ... I don't even remember why now. I have a lot of webby things on my watchlist for odd reasons, and once things get onto my watchlist they rarely fall off. Again, giving my own little critique of conference vs unconference, if you have a subject where some people are really experts, and you want to maximize the time spent hearing from the experts, then a pure unconference would be a less efficient way to make info available. (On the other hand, one of the things I dislike about "real" science conferences is the way that younger researchers whose talks were not "invited" get segregated into poster rooms, which could to some people feel like a hall of shame: "I wasn't invited. I'm not important. Nobody promoted my work for me and I have to do it myself.") Also, at unconferences, a lot of the session time/space can be seized by self-promoting talks. Nobody has to go to those talks, but it means that people slower off the bat to organize a session have fewer options. But maybe I will write a blogpost about my experience at both kinds of meetings. betsythedevine (talk) 20:33, 16 January 2011 (UTC)