I attended my first Unconference (and the first one in Kansas) yesterday. It was a really great experience. Interesting, engaging, interactive, and informative. All the things you hope for in a workshop/conference/etc. Of course, the fact that it was free and practically in my back yard didn’t hurt either. I was intrigued by the whole concept when I was asked to participate in the planning group. And I’m glad that I got to participate. If you ever see have a chance to attend an unconference, I highly recommend it.

This got me thinking about conferences in general. Generally we are encouraged to attend conferences for professional development, networking, and a variety of other reasons. But I don’t always walk away feeling that I got much for my money (or my library’s money if they are footing the bill). Are the conference planners really interested in what we want? Do they read the comments? Or are librarians just too nice to express dissatisfaction? Now this doesn’t happen all the time fortunately. But there have been occasions when I really have to wonder “why bother” when it seems to be the same stuff rehashed from the other 3 conferences I just attended. (Yes, I pretty lucky that I do get to go to things fairly often. Although 3 is an arbitrary number here.)

There were several things that I really liked about yesterday.
*It was nice that the topics for discussion were driven by the people who attended. So we got to talk about stuff that really mattered to us in our jobs or things that we were wondering about in regards to other people’s jobs. There was no formal program put out ahead of time.
*The discussions were timely. As someone pointed out, some conferences require proposals almost two years ahead of the actual conference. No wonder it sometimes feel like old news by the time you get to the actual date. What we talked about was what we were dealing with right now or facing in the near future.
*Not too much structure. But just enough. While there was no formal program, there was a schedule to help keep things on track. While I wouldn’t necessarily want days of this, it was nice for a change.
*I loved the fact that everyone was engaged in the discussions. Personally, after three days of being talked at in most conference settings, I’m bored (unless the speaker is really dynamic). And there isn’t always time to really ask questions and share information. This was what the whole day was about yesterday. And I came away with some interesting ideas to talk about with my colleagues.

I would definitely attend something like this again. Hopefully this will become a yearly event in KS.