While I’ve attended quite a few unconferences and open type of sessions, I attended the Community Unconference last week, and learned a valuable process that I’d like to share. I was encouraged to run a session, and kicked off a session on “how to have a successful community event”. If you’ve never been to an unconference you need to try it. It’s an open type of forum where the attendees determine the topics, and everyone is encouraged to speak, share, and offer opinions in each session. Still not sure? Here’s Dave explaining the basic concept –it makes sense.

[While the unstructured format of an Unconference has it’s place, sometimes, extracting valuable insights may be difficult]

There’s a nice summary of the event here, which Sheldon suggests that

“I can definitely say that it’s not for everyone. I’d say that it’s best suited for people who are not there to seek answers, but to seek ideas that they can use to form their own answers.”

The problem is that it can get chaotic, people spiral off to different topics, and the questions are sometimes never answered. While I certainly believe that the wisdom can be pulled out of the crowds there a few things I can suggest that can help it happen.

1) At the start of the session I explained what we were going to accomplish in the next 45 minutes. While the topics can certainly split into interesting tangents, the questions need to be answered (or at least tried to) or you’ve wasted the time of those that attended

2) As session leader, I encouraged everyone to speak, I asked those that didn’t speak during a lull to chime in, they often did. Sometimes people just need to be prompted, everyone likes to share. Tip: watch the eyes!

3) I gently kept the session on topic, so everyone would walk away with the highest value.

4) I took notes in my moleskine during the session, at the end of the session, I read off all the great points, and acknowledged however gave them

5) I instantly went to my blog and published them, links were added to it from the wiki, and my content was probably added to it.

I received an email later from a session attendee, she told me that I delivered her favorite session. One of the conference organizers thanked me too.

Maybe I’m being too hands on, I realize that an unconference is supposed to be very organic, I hope these suggestions can help others.