How disappointing Johnnie!

I was half-tempted to go, but in the end the thought of finishing a stack of stuff, so that I could then forget about work for the long weekend won...

What I didn't say was that the conversations after did make the whole evening completely worthwhile. So I wasn't disappointed, though I was frustrated by the formal part.

guy from Warwick was really good and it was great to put faces to a few blogs. But no food, long presos, and red wine is only going to lead to one thing....a bad hangover.

I couldn't make the one in New York the other night. Do we know if the format was the same there?

I'm ambivalent about the "talking presenter" conference format. I just attended the TED Conference, and, in the main, found the presentations terrifically stimulating. It's a large group (~1000) making interactive sessions very difficult. I've been in lots of Open Space sessions as well, and also find them very productive. I guess I find both valuable: sometimes I really do want to concentrate on what an expert has to say, at other times, I want to interact with that expert and others about the area under consideration.

I think the format would have been ok if there had only been two or three speakers, longer discussion sessions and time to mingle afterwards. I got really itchy towards the end, because I knew I had to run off to catch a train and the lawyer was eating into my mingling time. I mean, here we were with London's bloggerati all in one place, and no chance for me to talk to them all. So yeah, some good presentations, but just a little too many of them.

I just came back from speaking at ETech and had a similar experience... the sessions were so often about the need for more two-way networking and feedback, but yet they were all delivered in the one-way "push model" where the speaker talks, and the attendees listen (and I agree that the formal Q & A at the end does *not* count as interaction ; )

I wrote about this as well a couple days ago:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/03/interaction_vs_.html

Johnnie - for some reason this word popped into my head about the conversation you should have had with the lawyer - Ethnomethodology particularly in terms of disrupting social order. Your point about self organisation being most appropriate. Perhaps one should take it upon oneself to disrupt such formats in order to provoke self-organisation.

Of course serving the wine at the start could also provoke a similar effect...

As a person who is not an expert in this area... might if I ask: how would you handle the situation then?

Would be nice if you could give me a few examples. With over 100 persons, would open space a nightmare to manage?

Cindy

Cindy: the number attending would not be a problem in terms of Open Space but the time limit could be. I don't have a perfect answer but I think the plenary part of such events needs to be kept much shorter. I would lose the Q and A altogether and limit presentations to a total of 30-40 provocative minutes. And/or offer a choice of sessions for delegates.

Ultimately, I trust those attending to organise themselves; it's exactly what happened as soon as the presentations were over.

By definition Open Space (and self-organization in general) is a nightmare to manage which is why it calls for very different facilitation skills. You WANT to not manage the conference, and if you are uncomfortable with that, then you need to rethink your commitment to working in a networked world.

With crowds of more than 100 Open Space meetings positively hum...with groups in the hundreds, the self-organizing part makes the whole thing amazing. I have personally facilitated several events in the 200s with awesome results every time, judged by the participants and their engagemtn with the experience. Others have as well, and for many many more practical examples, have a look at http://www.openspaceworld.org

By contrast the traditional conference format becomes duller and colder the more people are in one room listening to a speaker you can barely see, drone on and on.

Self-organising gatherings which depend on serendipity (which is what the alternative sounds like) aren't particularly helpful, although I'm sure they're good fun.

When you have a disparate audience, as we did at the Polish Club, they all need to be brought to a similar understanding. This is bound to be perfect for only one person in the room. Others will be bored yet some will still flounder.

Q&A's can work well, but the questioner and the responder should bear in mind the needs of the wider audience.

How about getting the questioner to announce their topic and the moderator to ask "Who's interested?" A show of less than half (or two thirds) of the audience and Q&A time could be made brief and relevant. It would kill the 'show-off questioner' dead.

Fewer presentations is probably the only other thing that could have improved the use of time at the Polish Club.

I thought the ten-minute time slots for presentations was fine. Perhaps "ten minutes maximum and you're not allowed to talk fast" would be a good instruction for the speakers.

Then we could collar the speakers and ask our more obscure questions during drinks. Or, maybe better, email them afterwards.

David: I agree with you that fewer presentations would have been a very simple way of improving the event. The plenary session went on far too long.

My favourite format for large scale meetings is Open Space which doesn't rely on serendipity. It does create a simple but clear structure within which every individual gets a lot of flexibility to seek out the conversations and ideas that will most engage them. It's not, however, well suited (unadapted) to an evening event.

What I'm now exploring with Chris Corrigan and others are some ways to run events like this that do not rely on pre-prepared keynotes and which put more emphasis on engaging the curiosity and opinions of the audience.

I have seen countless meetings of all kinds where simple interventions have dramatically shifted the level of engagement. And not many came from a formal presentation.