I went along to 2 unconferences in London: BarCamp London 5 (Sep 27) and Social Media Camp (Oct 4). The unconference format is really great, smart people presenting about things they know and love followed by excellent discussion, no pretensions, no stuffiness.

The format

The unconference format is very simple.

• A good-sized group of people (let’s say 100) with a common interest get together for a day or 2.
• The organiser divides the day up into a number of areas and time slots for talks.
• On arrival, everybody writes the title of the their talk on a sticky and adds it to the schedule on a big poster.
• Everyone then runs around seeing talks, networking and having great conversations.
• Beer!

Presenting

The key to the format is that everybody presents a talk. In practice not absolutely everybody does. However, I’m a crap speaker (stage fright) and I made a conscious decision to present at both events. Both times I chose small rooms and it couldn’t have been less intimidating.

The result is talks from people on the front line, not people paid to waffle on pompously. I’ve paid a lot of money to go to very boring talks, but I’ve yet to see a boring talk at an unconference.

At BarCamp I talked about mobile web hacking and the mobile web ecosystem. At SMC I talked about data portability. The first talk was almost a rant about all the issues I’ve had over the past couple of years building MyMart. The second talk was more forward looking. By then, I’d got swish enough to use the remote for my laptop and make a presentation from Creative Commons licensed Flickr pictures. Unfortunately the presentations aren’t really suitable for sharing, the content was in the notes more than on the slides.

The unconference is great. I really look forward to going to more events. I can’t think of many topics to which the format could not be applied. Indeed the next event I’ll be attending is ecoCamp on Nov 29.