I’ve recently crossed into being considered senior enough as an organiser, such that people are asking me for advise on how to run their events. I’m enjoying giving out advise, and it also makes me reflet on event design in new ways.
I think there are two types of good events.
Purpose driven event design.
Unconference type events
I think there is a continuum between these two types, but also think that if you plot the best events along this continuum, you’ll find a bimodal distribution.
Purpose driven event design
When you organise one of these, you plan a journey for your participant. Everything is woven into a specific goal that is active by the end of the event. Everything fits together.
These can defiantly have a purpose (e.g. exchanging of ideas) but the purpose will be less precise than for the previous type, and more importantly, the purpose does not strongly drive the event design.
There will be designed elements around the edges, e.g. the opening and ending. But most of the event design just goes into supporting the unconference structure, which is not very purpose specific. For most of the event, the participants will not follow a shared journey, currented by the organisers, instead everyone is free to pick their own adventure.
Some advise from The Art of Gathering works for unconference type events, e.g. the importance of pre-event communication, opening and ending. But a lot of the advise don’t work, which is why I noticed this division in the first place.
Strengths and weaknesses of each type
Purpose driven events are more work to do, because you actually have to figure out the event design, and then you probably also have to run the program. With unconferences, you can just run the standard unconference format, on what ever theme you like, and let your participants do most of the work of running the program.
An unconference don’t require you to know what the specific purpose of the event is. You can just bring together an interesting group of people and see what happens. That’s how you get Burning Man or LWCW.
However if you have a specific purpose you want to active, you’re much more likely to succeed if you actually design the event for that purpose.
There are lots of things that a unconferences can’t do at all. It’s a very broadly applicable format, but not infinitely so.
I’ve recently crossed into being considered senior enough as an organiser, such that people are asking me for advise on how to run their events. I’m enjoying giving out advise, and it also makes me reflet on event design in new ways.
I think there are two types of good events.
Purpose driven event design.
Unconference type events
I think there is a continuum between these two types, but also think that if you plot the best events along this continuum, you’ll find a bimodal distribution.
Purpose driven event design
When you organise one of these, you plan a journey for your participant. Everything is woven into a specific goal that is active by the end of the event. Everything fits together.
The Art of Gathering is a great manual for this type of event
Unconference type events
These can defiantly have a purpose (e.g. exchanging of ideas) but the purpose will be less precise than for the previous type, and more importantly, the purpose does not strongly drive the event design.
There will be designed elements around the edges, e.g. the opening and ending. But most of the event design just goes into supporting the unconference structure, which is not very purpose specific. For most of the event, the participants will not follow a shared journey, currented by the organisers, instead everyone is free to pick their own adventure.
Some advise from The Art of Gathering works for unconference type events, e.g. the importance of pre-event communication, opening and ending. But a lot of the advise don’t work, which is why I noticed this division in the first place.
Strengths and weaknesses of each type
Purpose driven events are more work to do, because you actually have to figure out the event design, and then you probably also have to run the program. With unconferences, you can just run the standard unconference format, on what ever theme you like, and let your participants do most of the work of running the program.
An unconference don’t require you to know what the specific purpose of the event is. You can just bring together an interesting group of people and see what happens. That’s how you get Burning Man or LWCW.
However if you have a specific purpose you want to active, you’re much more likely to succeed if you actually design the event for that purpose.
There are lots of things that a unconferences can’t do at all. It’s a very broadly applicable format, but not infinitely so.