Most conferences have an agenda. No, not the stated agenda, but an agenda of marketing, airtime to sponsors, ensuring the past and future customers are invited, of ensuring that the "stars" of the industry are invited and attention showered of them. All in all it is a your scratch my back, I scratch your back syndrome. Some of these become cliques and claques and therefore the real point behind a conference is lost.
And then there is the unconference - organised and run by the alumni of the ISABS ODCP program. And as the name suggests, this is truly an un-conference organised by the alumni, for the alumni. No funders - except the alumni themselves. No sponsors. Just the team.
I havent seen a more tastefully organised conference (yes, its an unconference).
To begin with - the location - not a typical star hotel, but an outdoorsy place. The food - simple. The welcome - personal. It was like a homecoming. The setting was warm and welcoming. It was a smaller conference. Just a little over 50 participants. For many it was a chance to meet their batch in a setting and possibly after a long time - except for the more recent ones.
The participants were hosts as much as they were participants. There were some main sessions - not classified as main, but simply by virtue of presenter and topic. The rest of the sessions were self selected with each presenter taking a session of their choice with the audience that was interested. The agenda creation took a good 2 hours, but post that it was free flow.
We had all learnt OD in different batches. And since the course is an intense one, the bonding within a batch is quite high. This session sort of unified the batches into a larger community - as difficult as it sounds - this happened.
And for those interested, here is the method behind the madness: OST
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