Nonferences

In 'Where is the middle ground of unConferenceCamps and Overpriced Conferences', I felt the pain. I really did. I hate both unConferenceCamps and Overpriced Conferences - both as a speaker and as a part of the audience.

It sucks. And I've not gone to a conference in a while as speaker or audience (well, in RL) so I won't offend anyone when I let my hair down and drag my late night stubble across the blackboard of 'accepted practice'.

For me, the whole 'ference' thing boils down to this - I don't want to hear someone make a faux pas in the base of their intellectual pyramid of alphabet soup. Mind you, there are good speakers and there are people who know what they are talking about. The combination of the two into something greater than the whole is rare and something best experienced when (1) the topic is interesting, (2) the speaker engages the audience and (3) the speaker knows their limits on the topic. Of course, any type of conference involves herding cats - speakers and audience.

Anyway - the best part of either kind of conference is not the speaker. It is not the methodology. It's the bar across the street, the smoking area, and the place where the coffee and snacks are. These are 'nonferences'. So here's my thought.

A [t:Nonference] has some speakers. We have them read Vogon poetry inside. Everyone goes outside, and the ice breaker is how bad the poetry is. They gravitate and move around. The discussion eventually gets to what the conference is about, in a general way. If someone has a good conversation going, people will get drawn into it. If it's a bad conversation, people will leave in polite ways and find another place to be when they come back from their excuse. Bistromathematics is used to calculate the coffee and food bill, and the speakers in their cardboard boxes are given 10% of what the coffee and food bill is as a 'tip'.

If a nonference goes bad, you arm the attendees with rotten produce (goes on the food bill) and have them throw it at the speakers. The speakers actually get paid more for this, so even that's a winner for them.

This aids in having a good nonference, and also pays bad poets. Sounds like a winner to me.