Last fall, five people -- including myself -- began planning an
unconference. This will be the first library unconference to be held in Upstate New York and is modeled after
several that have been done in other locations. Since unconferences are still relatively new, I wanted to spend a moment and chronicle unofficially what we've been doing.
So what is an
unconference?
An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants (generally day-by-day during the course of the event) rather than by one or more organizers in advance of the event.
When we first met to discuss the idea, we all instantly liked it, but realized we didn't know enough. So
we took time to look at other unconference events and see how they were organized. We learned that there are models for unconferences, but that there are no truly firm rules. They are meant to be "loose" so they can be molded to the needs of the participants. However, we learned that the unconference held in New York City had spent a lot of time both upfront and at the start of the event deciding on topics and getting organized. We decided to try to do almost all of organization prior to the event, and to decide -- at least tentatively -- on the topics before the event begins.
With the task of deciding what topics might be discussed,
we decided to do a survey (using
SurveyMonkey) in order to solicit information from those who might attended. 136 people completed the survey and provided a wealth of information. The survey also included text to educate people on what an unconference is, since we recognized that most people would not know. We found that many people were indeed interested in the idea and hope to participate.
We also needed to find a
location for the unconference. Space is at a premium in this area and so we have ended up holding the unconference at a local hotel. The ramification of that is "cost." Instead of being able to hold a free event (which is generally a hallmark of an unconference), we must charge a registration fee. Thankfully, a grant is being used to cover the cost of the rooms we'll use. The registration fee will be used to cover the cost of food.
In thinking about location, we considered the following things:
- Amount of space needed
- Access to electricity
- Internet / wifi access
- Parking
- Flexibility of the location staff
- Flexibility of the space
- Cost
- Access to food
Yes, it would have been wonderful to hold the event on a college campus, but parking, space and cost would have still been issues.
Once we had the space, we were able to decide the number of concurrent sessions and schedule. We will run four concurrent sessions on Tuesday (Unconference on the Future of Libraries), with 16 total sessions plus a wrap-up session at the end of the day. On Wednesday, we will have a total of 8 sessions, plus two keynote speakers, and a wrap up session (Collection Development Conference).
As you can see, our
idea blossomed into
two events. The
Unconference on the Future of Libraries will be on Tuesday and will be run similar to other unconferences. Although there will be people to help keep the discussions going (and to take notes), there will be no formal speakers. It is expected that the participants will contribute to the topics, share information, and learn from each other. [Unconferences were born out of the idea that the people who often sit in conference presentations have a lot of wisdom that should be shared.]
The second day, the
Collection Development Conference will have two keynote speakers, whose presentations will be followed by unconference sessions. I guess we can think of this as a hybrid event. BTW collection development is a hot topic these days!
Okay...so we got the location and tentative schedule...next we needed to build a
wiki to house the information about this event (before, during and after). The wiki will be a constant work-in-progress as information is updated and added. It is the place where we will communicate what we're doing with the participants and we're they can also communicate with us (and each other). A wiki is a wonderful compliment to an unconference.
An unconference allows "the crowd" to share its wisdom, which is the same as a wiki.We learned from NYC that
unconferences do not run themselves, so the organizing group has been meeting monthly face-to-face and communicating in-between in order to keep things moving. In addition, we're enlisting the help of 10 library science (MLS/LIS) students to help us build content in the wiki (background info on the topics) and to take notes during the event. We also hope they can help keep the conversations moving during the sessions, if there is a lull.
Some
promotion of the event has already occurred using messages on
Facebook and
Twitter. There have also been some blog posts that have mentioned it too. So without doing much, information about the event is "out there." However, we know that promoting the event well is necessary, so beginning next week, we'll be circulating email announcements and telling people about registration.
Working on a team for this has been interesting because none of us have experience with unconferences. We each come from different backgrounds and organizations (
CLRC,
SCRLC,
SU and
Hurst Associates), and so come with lots of information. However, this is a new area for us, so we are learning as we go.
One of the areas that we struggled with was what to call this "thing." You'll see that we refer to the event as a "library camp", since several of these events have used that verbiage. We're also using the term "unconference", since that is how the event will be run primarily. Using both terms will also help us to be found through Internet search engines.
Should we
name the event after our location? We ended up using a URL for the wiki that includes "CNY" (Central New York), while the text uses the term "Upstate." New Yorkers can be finicky about how the describe where they live and so our text uses "Upstate" so that many people will see this as a conference that is meant for them. (The URL can't be changed at this point.) The formal name of the two-day event has become "Library Camp @ Syracuse", which tells you both what and where. Although naming seems minor (i.e., URL & name), we learned that it was something we all felt passionately about and that likely we should have addressed sooner.
Finally, I should mention two other social networking tools that have been employed --
Flickr and tagging.
We needed a graphic for the wiki and decided to use this one from David Lee King that he took at the Kansas City Public Library and available through
Flickr with a Creative Commons license.
As for
tagging, one of the things we decided to do was to announce what the tag would be for the event, and the tag is "unyunc". We hope that people will use that tag if they write blog posts, post photos/video, etc., so that a quick search for unyunc will retrieve everything related to the event.
The event is less than two months away! We know there are still things to do. Already, though, we thinking about next year. Will we do this again? Will another group in the area follow our lead? We hope so!
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