Are you tired of attending conferences and leaving without feeling like you learned anything or even connected with people on topics of interest? Jay Cross has some good posts on an alternative to these “one way talking at you” learning experiences. It’s unconferences or unmeetings and this is a good starting point for learning more about these useful alternatives to event based events

Unmeetings

Open source, open space, grapevines and gossip, conversations and stories, learning spaces and learnscapes, unconferences and The World Cafe, podcasts and wikis, graphics and concept maps, complexity and community…these are part and parcel of the free-range learning I investigated relentlessly while writing The Book

Business meetings used to come in one flavor: dull. New approaches create meetings that people enjoy, often organized in scant time, at minimal cost. Unconferences are characterized by:

* No keynote speaker or designated expert

* Breakthrough thinking born of diversity

* Having fun dealing with serious subjects

* Emergent self-organization

* Genuine community, intimacy and respect

Jay’s bottom-line: Conventional meetings are events; unmeetings are on-going processes. Unconferences work because they spur relevant conversations, which I think of as the stem-cells of innovation. My summary on unconferences.

Meaningful conversation is more important than ever because conversations are essential not only for imparting knowledge, but for creating it. Knowledge flows. Imagine the power of conversation with other free range learners conducted outside one’s specialty!