Adaptive Path Blog

Chiara Fox & I spent Monday and Tuesday getting our geek on at the She’s Geeky unconference in Mountain View. In addition to hanging out with smart, geeky gals and learning about a wide variety of tech+ topics, there were other things that made the experience notable, memorable and impactful.

What made it different:

• Use of the Open Space principles / Unconference structure
• Wide range of topics, diversity of skills, interests and life experiences
• Fully participatory - it was what you made of it
• All the participant were female, geeky and proud of it
• The participants created the conference contents

Highlights of the experience
The unconference format allowed for participation from anyone and everyone. If you wanted to connect with others about an idea, you were encouraged to add it to the lineup. There was a big sheet of paper where participants could post their sessions (aka: the grid.)

The grid changed and grew throughout the day. The principles of Open Space made it okay to have a big group, or just one person (yes, you can convene a group of 1!) Key to the process was the following:

• Whoever comes are the right people / is the right person.
• Whatever happens is the only thing that would have.
• Whenever it starts is the right time.
• Whenever it is over it is over.
• If you are not learning something or sharing something, you have the responsibility to respectfully move to somewhere you are.

Topics were wide and varied…Art + Craft + Geek; GIMP for open source image editing; Shameless Promotion; Guerrilla Tactics of a Diversity Evangelist; Cyber Bullying; What challenging questions should we be asking ourselves? and more.

The Computer History Museum is a fantastic location. One big room for lunch and discussion tables, and smaller rooms for breakout sessions. The espresso bar kept us jazzed for the 2 days.

What made it work? Every activity was grounded in participation:

• You make your own nametag with a nametagcloud
• Snap a poloaroid and write up your own profile
• Write your name on your coffee mug (and drink custom coffee drinks all day!)
• Open lunch table sessions on the first day

What I learned?

• If you want participants to make their own experience, use a format that includes them in the design of that experience.
• Invite interested, interesting people…and interesting things will happen.
• Be inclusive…create many ways to get involved and engaged.
• Make it consistently participative.

Many of the session notes are available on the She’s Geeky site, and lots of photos are on Flickr.

I’ll definitely go next year!

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 11:42 am and is filed under Collaboration, Conference commentary, Idealism, uncensored. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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