Interesting Vancouver - the Un-Unconference?

As per Yesterday’s post this is part of a series on particular aspects of Interesting Vancouver.  Eventually all this detail will be housed on the website.  Though until then use this space to pose questions and further discussion. 

One of the most interesting learnings so far has been the fact that Vancouver has a very active unconference scene.  In this part of the world, unconferences have grown to carry a fairly specific definition of what they are.  In fact many may even be more unconferencey than what Interesting is aiming to be.  With a generally very tech heavy theme local unconferences are great meeting places for ideas and solutions around various aspects of technology and day to day life.  But not always.

Now, I’ve attended very few full blown unconference as I always seem to be out of town shooting something or at a bloated corporate conference and/or meetings.  So I cannot astutely speak to exactly what they are.  But in planning Interesting Vancouver we have collected a wide variety of reviews and opinions of what does and doesn’t work at them.   James Sherrett and uber blogger Darren Barefoot in particular have been very insightful.

Barefoot really highlighted that around here there are many expectations of what an unconference is.  Without getting into all the boring nitty gritty details here is a quote from an email I sent Darren on whether Interesting Vancouver is or isn't an unconference:  

Interesting year one will be very interesting no doubt.  And part of its philosophy is figuring itself out as it goes and perpetually evolving.  One thing that's very interesting is this event started in London, where the understanding and definition of what an unconference is, is very different from Vancouver.  I've discovered that Vancouver has a very defined iteration of what an unconference is along with many successful events.  Not having attended the big ones it's great to get learnings and suggestions from the likes of yourself. The vision for Interesting Vancouver is in the middle between a unconference as the local definition stands and a well curated big fancy corporate conference like a TED or Idea City that appeals to professionals of all disciplines. 

So is Interesting Vancouver an unconference?  Yes.  Is it different from other unconferences in Vancovuer?  Yes.  The key to me is curation combined with spontaneity of the affair.  So moving forward to keep it clear we’ll avoid using unconference when speaking of Interesting Vancouver, out of respect for the great local unconferences, and although we live in a world folks love to put labels on everything we’ll simply refer to Interesting Vancouver as a conference of interestingness.  Until we find a better label that is…

Next up, why isn’t Interesting Vancouver free?  Tune in tomorrow.

Remember to go get your tickets at Eventbright.