On the topics of conferences…
I love learning from the insights and experiences of others - there is a certain rush you get when the penny drops whilst talking to someone which will give you a head-start or prevent you from making the same mistakes learning the same lesson as they did the hard way. It’s one of the major reasons I attended conferences and industry events. I tend to be quite selective about what events I attend based on the likely value (potential for ‘rush’) an event offers.
Recently most of the events I’ve attended have left me disappointed - presenter after presenter spouting out platitudes like ‘its about the customer’ or ‘digital is more than technology’ or talking at such a high level that the topic matter could be almost anything. Yes, we all know the future is all about mobile platforms (another tired ‘insight’) but is it really?!? What about how Alexa is going to change people interact with products and services? If you’re going to be a pseudo futurist then at least go out on a limb and say something provocative: “The interface of the future will be powered by natural language and use optical technology to help you access your information, overlayed with Augmented Reality!” Technology is moving so fast that that ‘prediction’ has about as much chance of being true as anything else someone can come up with.
Of course non of those scenarios compare to the ‘speaker on a circuit’ who keeps flogging the same dead horse topic or story for months/weeks on end and would attend the opening of a letter if it got their name into a brochure - perhaps a little harsh but we all know the type.
I’ve attended a few unconferences over the past few years and must say I’ve consistently gotten a whole lot more value out of those than the typical, structured corporate type conference. Unconferences bring together like minded people (or people interested in common topics) and allow them to set out the agenda for the event at the beginning of the event.
They are usually packed with free-form unscripted session of people talking about things they are passionate about and have had experiences with - sharing knowledge, not just talking about the varnished (sometimes dressed up) final product as is so often the case in traditional conferences. Footnote: I think every conference speaker should be forced to present a slide that’s entitled ‘and here’s the shit that really didn’t got to plan…’ just to ground their presentation in reality & relevance.
Unconferences have to date largely been the territory of small interest groups (software engineers, diversity groups, user experience designers etc.) or at least that’s my impression of the New Zealand scene. As I was leaving a conference this morning (disappoint again) I was left wonder whether we couldn’t host a unconference on a larger scale? Could we host a NZ Government Unconference? Perhaps each could host a series of ‘sub groups’ based on special interests so that it isn’t purely the management types that attend?
The other pet peeve of mine is attendance at conferences. There’s a certain ‘demographic’ that frequents them - let’s just say there’s seldom a queue for the ladies bathroom. We have a diversity challenge both in terms of the make-up of our teams but also in terms of being in touch with our customers.
Could the unconference format bring together our ‘traditional demographic’ with a wider, more diverse set of participants? We talk so much about including the voice of the customer into what we do - how do we actually go about doing that? The answer is most definitely not surveys and traditional reference groups BTW <- ‘by the way’ in case you were wondering, its text speak.
I’m lucky enough to know some awesome people, perhaps a few of us want could band together and create a government level event that uses the unconference format to create something fresh, relevant and high value for all participants?
To conference organisers - please review the structure, format and delivery of events; it’s dated and I would argue delivers low levels of value to participants if you asked them. Look at events like Web Summit or AWS Re:Invent to get ideas and change the way events are run.