OSB 2010 concludes

The Open Source Bridge conference for 2010 has concluded. The four-day conference had lots of great sessions, creative people, and imaginative ideas. The conference itself was a model for creativity, with the fourth day an "unconference" day in which the attendees plan the sessions. Rather than pre-planned (and pre-approved) sessions, the day is filled with attendee-run sessions. The opening time slot is spent planning the rest of the day, with people announcing sessions and pasting them onto a large white-board. Then attendees pick the sessions they want to view, and voi-la! Instant conference day!

I went to a bunch of sessions in the unconference, and they were informative and helpful. The topics were more varied than the regular conference sessions, with people discussing the resurrection of old Hypercard files and travel tips, yet still fun.

I think that the unconference works best at the end of a con. At the beginning of the con, people are still (mostly) strangers, but at the end of the con people are comfortable with each other. Also, its a more relaxed atmosphere.

I don't know how well the notion of an unconference scales. The planning session requires access to a whiteboard, and you can do that in a meeting of 150 people of which 30 want to present. I think it would be difficult at a conference such as OSCON with 3000 people of which 450 want to present. And on-line tools would be a poor substitute -- there is an air of intimacy with everyone in the same physical room.

But then not every conference must have every feature. There are things that OSCON can do with its size that smaller cons cannot. Let's use our resources -- and con size is a resource -- for good purposes.