There's a new breed of meetings proliferating in the high-tech world, with strange-sounding names like PodCamp, BarCamp, and WhereCamp. Falling loosely under the term "unconference," most are - like camping - informal, inexpensive, and largely do-it-yourself affairs. Organized entirely online, often via a group Web site, or wiki, their content is wholly determined and created by participants. And the number of such gatherings is hurtling upwards: At last count, BarCamp, organized by software developers in Palo Alto, Calif., in less than a week in 2005, had spread to more than 350 cities around the world. Such self-organized meetings, focused on peer-to-peer learning, are still rare in the non-tech world. But the rapid growth of unconferences - and their demonstration of the power of digital tools to bring communities together - has sparked debate and discussion about how their methods will affect the meetings and convention industry as a whole. What does it mean for conference organizers when participants have more control of the agenda? How can interactive methods make traditional conferences more attractive to a younger, more tech-savvy generation?

Unconferences also offer lessons, consultants and conference organizers agree, to a question that has everyone scrambling for answers: How can meetings retain their value and effectiveness in a world where ever-accelerating change and complexity are the norm?

What's So 'Un' About It?
"Unconferences are really just a fancy word for something that has been going on for a long time - [the use] of large-group methods," said Mary Boone, the author of Managing Interactively: Executing Business Strategy, Improving Communication, and Creating a Knowledge-Sharing Culture, and an authority on large-scale interactive meetings. The key attribute of unconference methods, Boone said, is their ability to gather and share knowledge and information among all meeting participants.

One of the mantras of high-tech unconferences is "everyone is an expert." That utopian ideal is actually a product of a practical reality: For those specialists working on the outer edges of innovation, there simply are no teachers - other than peers - standing ready to lead the way forward. But now, the high-tech world's embrace of collaborative learning is being mirrored in the world at large.

"Leaders increasingly understand that they have to lead and manage differently," "because the world is a lot more complex than it used to be." The "level of complexity that technology has introduced," she noted, "the different ways in which people partner within organizations, the way customers interact with companies" - all of it has remade the pre-Internet world of 10 to 15 years ago.

"When you are in a more easily understandable world, you lead on the basis of facts," Boone said. "When you are in a more chaotic or complex-based world, you lead on the basis of patterns - because there isn't any one right answer." The use of large-group, unconference methods, which allow a large degree of interaction and self-direction, helps leaders to see patterns of understanding and insight emerging in groups. "And then," Boone said, "they begin to get really good insights on how to lead in complex circumstances."

It's still "the early days" in the adoption of interactive methods in the meetings industry, Boone said. But meeting designers who learn how to use interactive methods strategically, rather than just thinking about logistics, can be of great value to their organizations. "Meetings have become a really powerful and effective medium for executives to tap into the collective wisdom and knowledge of an organization and all of its stakeholders," she said. "We are at a stage right now where, if we as an industry step up to the plate and help leaders better understand the role that meetings could play in their organizations, we can have a huge impact."

The prospect of allowing attendees to set the agenda, however, is hardly embraced by every meeting planner. Frequently, planners worry that if they turn the meeting over to participants, they won't be needed anymore. "Interactive methods don't replace traditional ways of getting together," Boone said. "They serve best as an adjunct to them."

Plus, they're inevitable. It's simply a given that the increased interactivity of the workplace will show up in the conference space, said Kaliya Hamlin, who in November was named to Fast Company's list of the 13 most influential women in Web 2.0. Hamlin, "chief process officer" of Process Geeks, has facilitated more than 50 unconferences over the last three years, in high-tech as well as more traditional settings. She expects that interactive methods such as the unconference will disrupt the "groove that meeting planners have been in forever" of scheduling speakers and presentations six to nine months out, and creating meetings where the real work actually gets done during coffee breaks. Hamlin is a critic of traditional conferences - not because she discounts the value of meetings, but because she believes passionately in their potential to solve problems.

"I think there is a lot of uncertainty on the part of conference organizers who feel they have to have a preplanned agenda," Hamlin said, "so that people will invest their time" in traveling to a conference. But it's a mistake to think that keynotes are what bring people to a conference. "What is really valuable is the face time for conversations about critical issues and emerging developments," Hamlin said. "Community is what brings people together. Supporting community interactivity is what gives conferences value."

Teachers Gone Wild
Organizers of the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) came to the same conclusion when they took a hard look at what it would take to keep their meeting relevant in the future. The massive annual meeting - it typically covers five and half football fields - is a main source of revenue for its sponsor, the nonprofit International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). So it's imperative that ISTE keeps finding ways to keep the conference attendees - up to 20,000 each year - coming back.

Unlike in other industries, where employers cover the cost of registration and travel to conferences, ISTE attendees - many of them teachers - usually pay their own way. That makes "our work as producers that much harder," said Donella Evoniuk, ISTE's senior director of conference services. "People aren't going to come to our event if it's not compelling, if their experience is not over the moon."

In rethinking NECC, ISTE also had to deal with the fact that the digital revolution has made it possible for professional development and continuing education to be delivered online. ISTE had to offer members something more at its face-to-face meetings than they could get through a Webinar, podcast, or some other virtual experience, Evoniuk said.

In research and in conversations with members, Evoniuk and her team dug deeply into the question: "How do we create an experience that can't be replaced with anything else?"  The answer, Evoniuk said, was "through engagement. We realized that interactivity was the real meat" of the conference experience.

That realization led ISTE to turn NECC on its head. In 2007, the program went from 32 concurrent session rooms (with theater seating and speakers at podiums) to an event in which 65 percent of the session content was interactive. That interactivity was made possible through coffee-house-style lounges, organized around a variety of special interests, where attendees could sign up to teach sessions. (Planners placed big "USE ME" tags on plasma screens to encourage participation.) A series of "playgrounds" allowed attendees to spend time getting their hands on new, interactive teaching tools. The conference still featured keynotes, a traditional registration desk, panels, and lectures, but it also took cues from online communities, where ISTE members already were gathering to share ideas with one another.

The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. "People just came unglued," said Evoniuk, who took to calling the conference "Teachers Gone Wild: Technology." "They loved it." A year later, almost everything about the way ISTE presents its annual conference has been transformed, from invitations that ask prospective presenters what they want to teach, to the use of methods designed to uncover what it is that attendees want to learn. Said Evoniuk: "It's kind of like, 'If we build it, they will learn.'"

The 'Old-Fart Conference'
The inevitability of unconference-like formats is a reflection of the greater truism that change, too, is inevitable - especially when it comes to the demands of a new generation who grew up using digital tools and who "behave significantly differently," said Stephen Abram, vice president of innovation for SirsiDynix, the world's largest supplier of library software.

While acknowledging that "You need speakers and panels," Abram - a frequent keynoter at the 150 conferences he attends a year - is always on the lookout for new formats to make the conference experience more engaging. Recently he used a Pecha Kucha format - a Japanese method in which speakers present 20 slides and comment on each for no longer than 20 seconds - for a presentation at the Internet Librarian 2008 conference.

Abram advocates the use of social-networking tools like Second Life, Facebook, blogging, and Twitter to extend the conference beyond the meeting room walls. "We bring our own wireless network … about 25 percent of our people have a laptop on their lap, and they are blogging, Twittering, building Web sites in the room, asking each other questions, sending notes out to people," he said. Conference participants "tag" their Twitters and conference blog posts with identifying labels, which contribute feedback to organizers and participants in real time. They serve another purpose as well: reflecting information about long-term trends back to organizers.

Many association professionals are "intensely conservative" and slow to adapt to new methods, Abram said. But organizations that aren't doing things like blogging conferences, Twittering, using YouTube, or podcasting "are just behind," he said. "If you aren't doing this kind of stuff, [younger participants] will go in and say, 'What is this old-fart conference? It isn't for me. I can go somewhere else to get the training I need.'"

A Framework for Interaction
Sure, an unconference format, with its multitude of interactive opportunities, might work for groups like ISTE's teachers or a bunch of Internet librarians, who are comfortable with technology. (NECC participants were so plugged in at the 2008 conference that they caused rolling blackouts in the convention center.) But what about other meeting groups? And what about the role of the planner? Won't unconference elements force meeting professionals to lose control of their events? And won't the meetings themselves disintegrate into free-for-alls?

No - if you've chosen the right methods and venues for your participants, Boone said. "The methods themselves have built-in capabilities to make sure that meetings run smoothly," she said. "But it requires a great deal of planning." It's easy, she added, to underestimate the challenge of using unconference methods in a way that creates purposeful interaction. You can't just put up a few wireless ports and whiteboards, and have people sign up for sessions. "You need to set up the interaction so that knowledge and understanding are shared across the board."

Unconferences are "sexy and hot and new, and everyone thinks that they are the way that they want to go," said Jennifer McClure, founder and executive director of the Society of New Communications Research, which hosts a variety of events, including an annual New Communications Forum. "But they can be fairly unproductive if you're not thinking about your audience and what they are trying to get out of an event."

Designing interactive meetings requires you to think carefully about every aspect of the meeting, from stakeholders to the number of power strips in a meeting room. "When someone is trying to apply these methods themselves, it requires some real crafting and understanding of the cultural context of the meeting, what will work in terms of logistical constraints, what's going to work in terms of outcomes," Boone said. "It also requires some understanding of what your options are before you dive in," because interactive methods produce different results in different contexts.

Interactive methods will work for anybody, Hamlin said, but they "must map to the way that professional communities interact with each other." It's a matter of trusting the facilitator or meeting designer to meet a community where it is culturally, she said.

In instances where Hamlin helps organizations incorporate unconference methods where they are unfamiliar, she often suggests that one traditional day of programming be followed by a day in which participants organize the content. Her clients often love the open-space day and find that experiencing them lessens their appetites for traditional conferences. "They like them a lot less," Hamlin said, "and consider them to be ineffective." 

Open space is an awesome tool to use to deal with complexity, she said. "Magic happens in terms of collective understanding and breakthoughs."

The Blended Conference
The idea of self-organizing content is nothing new, said Elliot Masie, founder of the Masie Center Learning Lab and ThinkTank. "It's called 'meet me at the bar,'" he said. "Now we've just taken the bar and added it to the core program."

For his Learning 2008 conference in Orlando in October, Masie took a hybrid approach to the format, scheduling a few high-profile keynote speakers and multiple sessions by his favorite kind of presenters: people in the field who have "stumbled upon an Aha! or an Oops! [moment]." The conference also included opportunities for attendees to schedule sessions that they themselves wanted to teach. Masie expected about 15 percent of Learning 2008's 1,800 attendees to participate in the self-organized sessions, but, he said, "for those people who want that, that may be the most valuable part of the entire conference."

Masie's Learning 2008 event is another example of a conference that addresses attendees' need for educational structure (so they know what to expect) as well as their growing desire to create content on the spot. "I wouldn't want to go to a totally self-organized conference," Masie said. "And I die if I go into a wholly structured event. It's all about the mix - the magic is in the mix."

Whether or not meeting planners embrace new techniques sometimes boils down to their comfort with taking risks, said Masie. For example, one of the key speakers at a conference general session was scheduled to speak for five minutes - from India, via Skype.

"I know it's going to work. I'm in the tech field, I use Skype personally," Masie said. "But you know what? If it doesn't, we'll laugh. That would cause a heart attack for some meeting planners."

There is steady - not revolutionary - change occurring, Masie said, which in the future will blend not only structured and unstructured content, but virtual and actual participation. The newest generation of meeting-goers is comfortable with digital experience: Attendees at the Learning 2008 conference participated in an alternate-reality game, designed by the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida.

The faltering economy is another factor that Masie expects will speed the rate of change. "It subtly makes travel a more obvious place in which organizations, smartly or dumbly, make cuts. So how do you have that meeting when some of your attendees, or some of your speakers, can't travel? Well, to me it's a no-brainer. You use technology." 

Competing With the Freebies  
If unconferences give content away for free, or at a minimal charge, doesn't that mean that professional conferences will lose their value?

Not so fast, said social media guru Chris Brogan, vice president for strategy and technology for CrossTech Media and co-founder of the original PodCamp. Brogan is an organizer of CrossTech's New Marketing Summit, which charges attendees several hundred dollars to attend an event that offers catered meals, multimedia, powerful wireless infrastructure, keynote speakers from around the United States and Canada, and 50 high-level exhibitors and sponsors.

The unconference model doesn't replace professional meetings, Brogan said. "It augments. They are two different delivery mechanisms, just like you might choose to dine at a fine restaurant or you might go to a loosely joined potluck." Brogan added: "Content and quality aren't dictated by the mechanism, mind you. We frequently have $30,000-$80,000 keynoters coming to our [PodCamp] events to speak for free, for love of the people. But, they are two distinct flavors."

That doesn't mean that Brogan thinks the new models won't affect the traditional conference model. "I think conferences will change in 2009-2010," he said. "They will become more compact. They will be more blended, the whole ad-hoc-meets-rigorous structure. They will use more virtual and online elements, before and after the event, to extend the learning and networking opportunities."

The Exponential Unconference
Silicon Valley consultant Kaliya Hamlin defines an unconference as "everything [that lies] in the space between a cocktail party and talking heads." Her description reflects the almost infinite variety of ways in which interactive methods can be applied to meetings. One size - or best practice - does not fit all, said Mary Boone, author of Managing Interactively. "You can't just take what works in one context and apply it in another. You can give people examples, but there's a danger there: Every type of meeting is different."

Two of the most widely used conference formats that put a premium on gathering and sharing information are:

• Open Space: The "pure" unconference uses open-space methods that allow for agendas to be created on the spot by participants. (You can find an interview with Harrison Owen, who formulated Open Space techniques, in the April 2006 issue of Convene. Click on the April 2006 issue in the issue archives at www.pcma.org/Convene.htm.) PCMA's 2009 Annual Meeting will include open forums, where attendees with shared interests will set the agendas.
• World Café: Participants discuss issues at small roundtables, moving to different tables at intervals. One person stays at each table and briefs the next group, in order to promote the cross-fertilization of ideas. Although the technique sometimes incorporates laptops to capture and broadcast ideas, technology isn't always put to use - or even might be barred.

Know Thyself
It would be hard to overemphasize the importance of taking into account the culture of organizations and associations when creating a strategy for incorporating interactive methods, said Mary Boone, an authority on using large-group methods at meetings. "You should ask yourself: 'What is the climate for doing something different? Are people eager to learn more? Are they willing to experiment?'"

Boone also advises:

• Start on a small scale. Don't assume that everyone will want to come to interactive sessions.
• Identify opinion leaders within the organization, and make sure they have a good understanding of the value of unconference techniques.
• Explain interactive concepts both in advance and during the meeting. When doing something new, be meticulous with signage and make it easy for participants to ask questions, through such methods as stationing guides wearing "Ask Me" buttons around the room.
• Find ways to use technology to extend the experience before, during, and after the conference.

Barbara Palmer is senior editor of Convene.