A leap into the unknown - organising my first unconference

Last week I hosted my first ever unconference - an informal and interactive approach to a group meeting that does away with traditional agendas and presentations, and instead puts participants in control of the discussion.

The inspiration came from the DVB World event that I attended earlier this year - my first experience of the unconference format. Ever since witnessing how that event initiated discussion and collaboration in a way that traditional conferences never quite achieve, I'd been wondering how I might apply the concept in my own work. Before too long, I saw the opportunity when I was asked to put together the program for a big internal conference with our global commercial and strategic partnerships teams.

When organising our event, I was very grateful to Eoghan O'Sullivan at the DVB Project , who had kindly published insights into how he organised that unconference in a great blog . In that spirit, I would like to share some of my own experiences here, building on what Eoghan achieved.

The idea

Back in June, I was approached by my colleague Javier Foncillas with the request to lead the organisation of a 3 day internal conference for our global commercial partnerships and strategic partnerships organisations in San Francisco. A key goal that he identified early on was to maximise the impact of bringing everyone together again, after several years of COVID-induced separation. So, as well as planning 2 days of the usual presentations, we started to think about ways that we could structure more interactive and action-oriented discussions on our final day, that would help make new connections and to generate new ideas.

Remembering my experiences at DVB World, I quickly reached the conclusion that the unconference format could work well for us, despite our event being at a much larger scale than the DVB event with almost 300 participants from all around the world. Fortunately, Javier liked the idea too and was willing to give the format a try for our third day.

Initial planning

Having convinced Javier, the next challenge was to convince the rest of the event organising team. The biggest obstacle was helping them to imagine what it would be like and why the format would work - to someone who has not experienced an unconference, it sounds like it will certainly descend into complete chaos. I'm glad that eventually they saw my personal conviction that it would work out and were willing to give it a go!

One useful tool was a short document I wrote describing the format, so that they could start to better visualise how it would operate. It really helped to include some photos from the DVB World event to show the layout of the opening 'circle' and the construction of the agenda. It also helped to explain that letting a certain amount of chaos happen is a critical part of the process - participants need to see that chaos so that they 'lean-in' and take shared ownership in proceedings.

One of our first tasks was to validate that we had suitable spaces available to host the unconference in our HQ building. The preceding 2 days of traditional conference would be held theatre-style in our (wonderful) on-site cinema, but for the unconference we would need some very different spaces - a big space suitable for opening and closing 'circles', and lots of smaller breakout spaces for topic discussions. In August, I visited San Francisco for a recce of our HQ building with the team, where we identified that our atrium space was large enough to accommodate the full group circles, and that there would be sufficient meeting rooms available elsewhere in the building for breakout groups. So the unconference was on!

Our unconference format

The rest of the conference agenda gradually started to fall into place, and it became clear that we had time on Day 3 for a 90 minute opening session, 4 x 1 hour topic slots (with a break for lunch between slot 3 and slot 4), and a 60 minute closing session.

Our biggest question was if and how we should adapt the format to accommodate almost 300 participants. Although we had a good number of meeting rooms available for the topic breakout sessions (10 or more), these were of varying sizes - two suitable for up to 50-60, most suitable for 30-35, and some smaller. How would we get the right topics into the right rooms? We spent hours discussing ways that we could collect advance data on the likely attendance for topics - from counters in jars to electronic thumbs up - but all of these required that topics be submitted in advance, and had the unwanted effect of seeming to pass judgement on the attractiveness of each topic proposal.

Ultimately, we concluded that advance submission would detract from an important principle of the unconference, which is that anyone can claim space for any topic. Although we had the option to do the topic submission and scheduling on an earlier day of our event, we wanted to keep the unconference distinct from the more traditional conference, with a different, collaborative atmosphere on that day. Ultimately we realised that, on the day, the 'Law of Two Feet' would apply - this says that participants should use their 'two feet' to find another session if the current session doesn't work for them. So if a participant found a session to be too full, they would just need to find another session. We also realised that, although we had some even bigger spaces available (60-100 people), participation in group discussion would likely be degraded with groups that big. So we decided to push ahead with doing all of our topic submission and scheduling on the day, without worrying too much about over-full sessions, and with using the mid and smaller -sized rooms only.

Although we kept all the unconference proceedings to Day 3, we did take the opportunity to do a short pre-briefing at the end of the normal conference sessions on Day 1 to help people know what to expect from the forthcoming unconference and to prompt them to think about topics. We emphasised the need to be ready with a 1 minute summary of any proposed topic. We also included a high level explainer of '5 things to know about the unconference' in the registration pack that they picked up on the first day, designed by colleague Kierra S.

The opening circle

On the day of the unconference, we started with the full group gathered for the 'opening circle' in the atrium. According to my research into unconference principles, this is typically arranged as a single circle of participants, signalling that all are equally invited to contribute. The particpants are invited to propose topics for discussion, which are then assigned timeslots as an agenda is built from scratch.

This presented us with some challenges. We needed to find a way to seat a circle of 300 people, where they all had visibility of some kind of display where we could build the agenda. Although the space we were using had space to seat 300 people in 2-3 concentric circles, many would end up very distant from the wall we had earmarked for displaying the agenda. In the end, we decided to compromise on the purity of the seating layout, in order to give better engagement in the process of building the agenda.

We kept the core idea of a circle of chairs around a central presentation space - totalling around 120 seats. The rest of the group was accommodated on the bleacher style seating of the atrium. The asymmetric, multi-row result was not perfectly equitable according to unconference principles, but for our group it didn't seem to affect participation - perhaps mitigated by the group having already spent 2 days together including two evening social events, and having mutual connections as colleagues.

Following the approach from DVB World, we featured a vase of fresh flowers in the centre of the presentation space, giving a visual anchor and signalling a different kind of event.

After I gave a brief recap of the format for the day and an introduction to the Law of Two Feet, participants were invited to propose discussion topics. To make a proposal, they wrote their topic title on a large 'Post-It' sticky note (280mm x 280mm) and joined a line ready to present a one minute summary to the group. I was somewhat relieved when Rik van Leeuwen jumped straight up to make the first proposal! My colleague Jan Müller kept order in the line, managed the microphone and helped presenters with any process questions. With such a large group we were very concerned about time, and realised we needed a way to help presenters keep their contributions concise. Although we had a speaker countdown timer available, we opted instead for the old school approach of handheld signs for 30 seconds and 15 seconds left, which seemed much more in keeping with the informal spirit of unconference. This worked - the presenters did a great job of summarising their ideas quickly. (Thanks to Marcin Mazurkiewicz for bravely operating the signs!)

After the idea was presented, the post-it was assigned to one of the open slots on our schedule wall by another colleague, Steve Vernon. This was a simple matrix display constructed by fixing art paper to a handy marble wall in the atrium. We found that this was sturdy enough that the post-its could be moved around in order to re-schedule sessions. We did some juggling of sessions to avoid conflicts between similar topics, but ultimately the scheduling process went smoother than we had dared hope, and we quickly had a schedule of 28 great topics arranged over our 4 time slots. We applied some intelligence real time when assigning topics to rooms, so that obviously popular topics went in the 50-60 capacity rooms - but we didn't have to think about this too much, and it all balanced itself out ok.

As the schedule was constructed, Kierra S. and Kevin Perry drew electronic versions - one in portrait orientation for display on participants' mobile devices, and one in landscape for display on a 80" monitor in the atrium space. The mobile version was particularly useful - we displayed QR codes in the atrium and in all the breakout rooms so that people could directly access this to keep up with any changes.

Before sending participants off to the sessions, I gave a briefing on 5 things to remember for a successful session:

• First step: agree a Reporter to make notes
• Everyone should have opportunity to contribute to discussion
• Don't forget to identify next steps
• Hard stop at 50 mins
• Reporter must file report directly at end of session

These points were also displayed on a poster in each of the breakout rooms as a reminder.

The topic sessions

As our topic rooms were spaced on different floors around the building and as we had so many people moving around, we limited topic discussions to 50 minutes so that participants had 10 minutes available afterwards to find their next slots.

We were fortunate to have the support of a number of colleagues which meant we could assign a room supervisor to each breakout room - they checked the setup of the room before each session and were on hand to deal with any queries from the facilitator, reporter or other participants. We did not generally attempt to guide or influence facilitation of the sessions but the supervisor did keep watch to make sure that next steps were captured and that the sessions ended on time.

Many of the rooms had a fixed central meeting table so the layout was fixed. Our larger spaces had more flexible furniture that could be moved - this was arranged classroom-style and in hindsight it would have been better to organise in a less formal style

Reporters captured a summary of the session using an online form, built using Qualtrics. In addition to capturing key points and next steps, this also included the number of people in the session and the names of the facilitator and reporter. A real time report was setup, enabling me to monitor the output of all sessions in real time. This will be turned into a written summary for participants and the wider organisation.

The closing circle

After our four topic slots, we re-grouped in the atrium for the closing circle. Reporters were invited to give a 60 second summary of their sessions, highlighting key points from the discussion and one or more proposed next steps. We used the handheld signs for timing, and again the speakers did a great job of providing concise summaries.

It was incredible to hear the range of topics that had been discussed, to see the ideas that had been generated and to note the obvious new connections that had been formed. It was great to see that colleagues from all over the globe had embraced the format and had enjoyed participating in the discussions.

Feedback received on the session includes:

• "The highlight of the conference. Let's keep the conversation going"
• "Really fantastic. Such valuable conversations"
• "I was indeed very dubious - and very pleasantly surprised at how useful it was"
• "Let's make all the conference an unconference next time!"

My thanks go to all my colleagues who participated for taking the leap with me, and in particular the unconference team: Jan Müller , Kevin Perry , Kierra S. , Marietta Cinco , Monica P. , Steve Vernon, and Youky Koh