Sessions led the day they are scheduled outperform polished presentations.
observation — attributed to Adrian Segar
Segar's unconference sessions are usually led by participants who learned the day before that they would lead. No one expects something polished. The format is interactive by design, not by accident. Participants discover the ten other people in the room who are fascinated by the same question, or who know a lot about it. The sessions are popular precisely because they are about topics people care about, generated by the room rather than imposed on it. The implication for conventional conferences is uncomfortable. Spending months on polished sessions that nobody in the room asked for produces less engagement than a session designed yesterday around a question the room generated.
For program designers tempted to over-invest in polished plenary sessions at the expense of participant-generated content. The observation is most useful as a budget-reallocation argument.
session-design, spontaneous-leadership, audience-interest, polish