Unconferences started as independent conferences where the attendees organized and created the content on-site. These events do things that are hard for traditional conferences– they create great discussions, cover nichier content, and can cover more relevant topics because the sessions don’t need to be announced months in advance.

However, unconferences don’t need to be done as independent conferences–they can be incorporated into a traditional conference program. MPI, an association of conference professionals, ran an unconference track as part of their recent Meet Different Conference. The Web 2.0 Expo series of conferences has been running an unconference track (Web2Open) at their last three events. I co-organized the last Web2Open and here are some tips that you can use for your own unconference track:

1. Use OpenSpace techniques.
We’d never organized an unconference before so we were worried about the logistics. How do you explain the concept? What are the ground rules? How do you facilitate the schedule creation? We read up on and cribbed techniques from OpenSpace Technology. Open Space is set of techniques and resources for running meetings such as unconferences. They’re a great resource and we did fine as first-timers because of them.

2. Discussion only–no presentations or projectors.
One of your major headaches will be turning down people who want to give sales presentations. If their presentation was any good you would have already accepted them into the main track. The strength of the unconference track is that it allows for discussion. We had plasmas available but the best sessions were discussion only. Don’t give any room for people to lecture. Take away the projectors. Say no to presentations. Everyone will be happier with the result.

3. Have a highlights board in the main conference area.
At an independent unconference everyone is there for the same thing. They’re in the same area and on the same schedule. If you’re integrating an unconference track you’re going to need to work hard to make people aware of all the great sessions that are going on. We put a big white board in the main area and put highlights from each time slot.

4. Offer free passes for volunteers.
Our volunteers spent a lot of time answering questions about what an unconference was, what sessions were going on, how someone could add a session, and where a particular session was being held. That left us free to help the speakers, work out space issues, and actually attend part of the conference that we’d spent all this time organizing. The volunteers seemed happy to trade their time for free conference passes.

5. Coordinate before-hand online.
Normally unconferences put up a wiki where attendees can announce that they’re coming and suggest session ideas. This sort of coordination becomes an order of magnitude more important when you’re incorporating the unconference into your main track. Attendees will be coming and going. But how will they know when to come? By far the most successful session at Web2Open was on Health 2.0. The session coordinator found every single attendee in health care or medicine, emailed them to let them know about the session, and asked them what topics they wanted to cover. The result was 30 attendees who went over their allotted time by 60 minutes and when they finally did end, had looks on their faces that made clear that they’d just attended the best session of their lives, one that had been specifically tailored to them.

How did the Health 2.0 guy find and contact all those attendees? Web 2.0 had a CrowdVine conference social network. Wiki’s are nice but our social networks make it much easier to discover attendees (because of our tagging feature) and then to contact them. We hear a story like this every time we’re involved in an unconference.

I’ll be in New York City starting tomorrow and staying through July 11. Jay will be joining me for the middle two weeks. We already have a ton of meetings lined up, but if you want to know more about CrowdVine then drop me a note (tony@crowdvine.com).

CrowdVine is an entirely virtual company. We’re based around the San Francisco Bay Area and our customers are based all over. This trip to NYC is one of the advantages of being virtual. Jay is staying with family. And I’ve arranged a house exchange with a law professor at the New York Law School.

The professor is a CrowdVine customer and uses us to help Patent Lawyers find jobs. That’s more proof that the main predictor of a successful network is having a reason to network (and not tech savviness).

Hope to see you in New York!

Last friday, I was lucky enough to be a guest speaker at California Society of Association Executives in order to talk about social software for professionals.

I love talking to normal people about emerging technologies and from a technology perspective these folks were very mainstream (although from a leadership perspective they were elite). To give you a sense, the other speaker was the president of the association of chain link fence manufacturers. Here’s where some of the highlights from the presentation and the feedback:

There are three primary reasons the executives were interested in social software (blogs, wikis, social networks). They want to know what the buzz is about. They want to be more relevant with young members. They want to continue to attract and retain members.

One of the first questions was how hanging out on Facebook for hours on end would help their association. Luckily I had an answer. It won’t. That’s leisure and nobody should be doing that as part of their work day. However, there are plenty of ways to use a social network for professional use cases. You just need to stay away from the leisure activities.

Another concern was that their members were older and unfamiliar with social software. All of our demographic data shows that the number one driver of activity is how strongly people want to network. At a recent tech conference, 9 of the top 10 job titles fell in the range between Project Manager and CEO. The geeks had been pushed out by managers and executives. Also, our networks for associations are always our most active because people join associations to network. Familiarity with social networks never comes into play (although people need to own a computer).

Interestingly, nobody had a strong desire to blog. I think this is because their members weren’t big blog readers. However, several people had good experiences with blog search and I was able to point them to Summize which is just as powerful but for Twitters.

Some people think associations have a problem because they aren’t attracting a younger demographic. As evidence, only two people in the room of 150 were younger than 30. The alternative view though was that people aren’t seeing the need for associations until they’re more established. I tend to believe that.

My goal was to give people a framework about thinking of social software as a tool to solve a problem. A blog can be a way to communicate and converse with members. A wiki can help you publish and update key information. A social network can help members connect. And of course, a CrowdVine social network for your conference means your attendees show up knowing who they want to talk to.