the third way
The conference wars have fired up again – though I have to say that this time, it’s kind of refreshing to see a little pushback to the whole unconference "thing". This is not to say that unconferences are wrong, or bad, or whatever, but that I don’t think that they are the Only Way any more than anything is the Only Way.
We are trying to find the Third Way with mesh. Not your Father’s Oldsmobile of a conference, but not a fully unstructured thing either. We are trying to find a way to be respectful of the varying degrees of subject matter expertise among the participants, while being engaging and participative.
Mark publishes his conference wishlist here (not like that’s news for the rest of us 
) and Mathew talks about our approach here. And hey, I’m even into it on my own blog here.
What do you think?
Posted in mesh news
1 Comment
I like Mark's wishlist. Unless the topic is policy-driven or very complex stuff, PowerPoint should be seldom used, if at all.
The most fun I've had at a conference was Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) in the early 90s.
They had multiplayer games, candy, and amazing tech demos (the comparative processing power of an 040 versus PowerPC) and great parties.
Also agree that Q&A and overall audience participation is so key to a satisfactory experience for both attendees and speakers.
Hey, you guys should do a directory of all the participants who will blog and maybe even think about creating tags for each session.