Whether for work or pleasure, a conference is usually a cross between the frantic first day of school and an endurance challenge — picking and finding sessions that interest you while struggling to stay awake during parts of the program that don’t.
If a fixed grid of presentations and panels featuring an awkward mix of experts and sponsors doesn’t appeal to you, seek out an “unconference.”
Admittedly, the complete opposite of a conference probably would be a lazy afternoon on the beach. Instead, an “unconference” takes the best parts of a gathering of like-minded people and jettisons the rest.
What topical sessions make up the unconference program? That’s decided on the spot by the attendees, usually over morning coffee. If everyone votes for a session on virtual reality or homelessness or squirrels, it goes up on the board.
Of course, squirrels are not likely to take the top spot at a gathering of software developers, but stranger things have happened.
Who’s speaking? Anyone, everyone, possibly even you. Unconferences often ban PowerPoint presentations and usually ban sponsor pitches, leaving most sessions as open spaces for focused and constructive conversations. An industry leader might lead the group, but a weekend tinkerer who randomly turns up in the audience may very well be the star of the hour.
Unconferences have been around for two decades and are most common in the technology space. FooCamps, organized by tech publisher O’Reilly Media, solidified the trend in California. And Hawaii has seen a number of unconferences as well, focused on tech, education, sustainability and even government services.
If you’re looking to experience the crowdsourced energy of an unconference, there are two coming up that are worth checking out.
Later this month Unvoxxed Hawaii will be held in Honolulu. Formerly the LavaOne technology conference, it’s now affiliated with the global Voxxed event series, spanning from Europe to Singapore.
While LavaOne was intensely focused on Java programming, Unvoxxed Hawaii is embracing the unconference model.
“That opens up the opportunity to talk about anything — hard-core, low-level topics or soft topics or any programming language or framework,” said organizer Chris Thalinger. “We are inviting some international speakers and people from well-known companies, but the attendees will decide the content.”
Thalinger, who worked for tech giants Sun and Oracle prior to his current software engineering role at Twitter, is bringing in friends from those firms as well as companies like Google, Red Hat and IBM.
Like many people who call Hawaii home, Thalinger is motivated by the opportunity to showcase the islands as a place where real tech work and innovation are happening.
“Hawaii people work harder than anybody else because the cost of living is so high,” he said. “The fact that it’s a beautiful environment doesn’t mean people aren’t working hard.”
“My main motivation is to help Hawaii people get more IT jobs,” he added. “In my opinion, remote IT jobs are perfect for Hawaii, so I wanted to put Hawaii on the map a bit more.”
Thalinger said he’s expecting the attendee mix of Unvoxxed Hawaii to be half from Hawaii and half from out of state but that the greatest benefits are going to be for the locals.
“They will get way more out of it,” he said. “It’s all about inspiration, and successful international engineers or speakers always encourage people to be more active and creative. … That’s what I hope will happen.”
Unvoxxed Hawaii takes place Feb. 24-25 at the Entrepreneur’s Sandbox in Kakaako.
For teachers and educators, meanwhile, the 808 Unconference will be the place to be next month. Set for March 28 at Hahaione Elementary School, topics could cover anything but in years past have included ed tech, project-based learning, teacher leadership and student agency.
But if someone suggests squirrels, they’ve got my vote.
Ryan Ozawa is communications director for local tech company Hawaii Information Service and runs HawaiiTech.com and HawaiiCal.com for local tech news and events. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter at @hawaii.
