Frustration at conventional conferences is the design brief.
observation — attributed to Adrian Segar
Segar's invention of the unconference came from frustration as a participant. At physics conferences in 1992, the focus was on a few speakers, and he had no opportunity to interact with the people sitting next to him who also had interesting information. The unconference is the format-level response. Discover what people actually want to talk about at the event itself. Build the program in real time around their interests. The reframe matters: the participants are not the audience for the program, they are the source of it. The implication for any convening designer is that the participant's frustration is often the most useful design input the team will get.
For conference designers, convening leaders, and program managers thinking about why their participants are disengaging. The observation is most useful as an origin frame for any new format being built to fix what existing formats produce.
unconference, format-frustration, participation, origin-story