I have been organizing and facilitating small conferences for over twenty years. One of them is a very successful conference, edACCESS, for information technology staff at small schools - next year will be the nineteenth annual conference.
The replies so far have assumed a traditional conference model - pre-programmed sessions with (hopefully) good presenters. What we do at edACCESS (and the other conferences I facilitate) is different. We use a peer conference model, which is the best way I know for a group of people with a common interest to come together for a few days to share and learn from each other.
Peer conferences are small, attendee-driven, highly interactive, safe, reflective, and build the community that participants want; they are like unconferences and Open Space events, but are more structured, less biased towards extroverts, and default to confidentiality.
They work really, really well, and people love them - several thousand attendees to date. And it's very rewarding to organize and run one. Four years ago I decided to try and get the word out.
The result - I've just published a book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love that includes a detailed critique of traditional conferences and a complete roadmap for organizing and running peer conferences. You can read a more detailed intro to peer conference process at the accompanying website http://www.conferencesthatwork.com/. Comments and questions are welcome.
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I have been organizing and facilitating small conferences for over twenty years. One of them is a very successful conference, edACCESS, for information technology staff at small schools - next year will be the nineteenth annual conference.
The replies so far have assumed a traditional conference model - pre-programmed sessions with (hopefully) good presenters. What we do at edACCESS (and the other conferences I facilitate) is different. We use a peer conference model, which is the best way I know for a group of people with a common interest to come together for a few days to share and learn from each other.
Peer conferences are small, attendee-driven, highly interactive, safe, reflective, and build the community that participants want; they are like unconferences and Open Space events, but are more structured, less biased towards extroverts, and default to confidentiality.
They work really, really well, and people love them - several thousand attendees to date. And it's very rewarding to organize and run one. Four years ago I decided to try and get the word out.
The result - I've just published a book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love that includes a detailed critique of traditional conferences and a complete roadmap for organizing and running peer conferences. You can read a more detailed intro to peer conference process at the accompanying website http://www.conferencesthatwork.com/. Comments and questions are welcome.