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July/August 2006
Best Practices: Hosting an unconference
Disney Corp. foregoes structured agenda to put program planning in participants’ hands
By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor
It wasn’t easy to convince Disney executives to buy-in on the idea of a loosely organized day camp for technology nerds. But the rising popularity and documented success of the “unconference” format persuaded them to try it. They liked it.
“At Disney, technology is one of the core things we focus on,” says Michael Pusateri, Vice President, Engineering, at the Disney ABC Cable Networks Group in Burbank, CA. “We asked how we can inspire more innovation in the company without doing the typical, ‘Let’s have a meeting with speakers and PowerPoint’?”
Energized by past participation in O’Reilly Media’s annual Friends of O’Reilly (Foo) Camp (http://wiki.oreillynet.com/foocamp05/), Pusateri suggested launching a Disney version. Like Foo Camp, Pooh Camp would have no agenda, speakers or spectators — just participants. “There was hesitation,” he says. “It’s very unstructured, and we’re a very structured company.”
The original idea arose from the 1992 book, Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, by Harrison Owen (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2nd edition, September 1997). Owen’s premise was to enable self-organizing groups of up to 1,000 to set the agenda for dealing with complex issues in a short time period. Computer geeks adopted the concept and in 1998 coined the term “unconference,” defined by Wikipedia as “a conference where the content of the meeting is driven and created by the participants rather than by a single organizer.”
“With our anecdotal experience and an actual book that carried some weight, we were able to propose it in our organization as something we’d like to try,” Pusateri says.
An organizing committee issued invitations to about 150 senior-level technologists, then phoned invitees to explain how the camp would work and encourage them to prepare for show-and-tell on technology-related topics. “We ran into some of the problems the O’Reilly folks had warned us about,” Pusateri says. “People didn’t understand why there wasn’t an agenda. They asked why we didn’t have planned speakers.”
A Wiki (collaborative Web log) helped communicate the concept and provided a forum to share ideas for presentations. About 100 people signed up from across the country and abroad. “There were a lot of vice presidents and directors,” Pusateri says. “Once there was one important person coming, the others wanted to come, too.”
Unlike Foo Camp, where participants camp out for three days in Sebastopol, CA, the one-day Pooh Camp convened on March 6, 2006, at Golden Oak Ranch, a Disney property north of Los Angeles. Organizers ordered catering services and reserved eight meeting rooms with flip charts, projectors and high-speed Internet access. After Pusateri’s brief introduction, participants went to eight blank agenda boards and wrote in topics for one-hour time slots. Sessions filled up within 10 minutes, covering a wild assortment of technologies — from animation and robotics to rocket propulsion and geocaching.
The one complaint: Pooh Camp needs to be longer.
“At Foo Camp, you’re there 24/7 for three days,” Pusateri says. “After the sessions, we had an open bar with a keg and fire pit. People were drinking, smoking and playing games until 3 a.m. There was a lot of camaraderie and friendship building.”
Since Pooh Campers are unlikely to sleep in tents — and hosting accommodations for a multi-day event is cost-prohibitive — the event will likely remain one day. But as word-of-mouth spreads, Pusateri envisions Pooh Camps tacked on to more traditional meetings.
San Francisco Bay-area freelance writer/editor Cathy Chatfield-Taylor covers marketing and technology for b-to-b media. She has contributed trend stories, case studies, how-to articles and technology reviews to EXPO since 1995. E-mail cathy@cctunlimited.com.
Goal: Inspire technology innovation.
Objective: Bring high-level technologists together for one-day “unconference.”
Strategy: Forego structured agenda to put program planning in participants’ hands.
Tactics: Invite attendees to come prepared to speak, set up Wiki to propose topics beforehand, post sign-up sheets for one-hour time slots in eight meeting rooms and provide projectors, Internet access and food.
Results: About 100 technologists shared ideas ranging from using digital media to making droids. |
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