I attended my first unconference, commonly referred to as “-camps”, almost 2-1/2 years ago, when I went to Mountain View for MashupCamp, and have attended several since then, including more MashupCamps, BarCamp, TransitCamp, ChangeCamp and DemoCamp. I like the unconference format: although I rarely propose and lead a session, I actively participate, and find that this sort of conversational and collaborative discussion provides a lot of value.
We started with an unpanel, a format that I’ve never seen before but really like: the MC has the audience shout out topics of interest, which he writes on a flipchart, then the four panelists each have 60 seconds to pick one of the topics and expand on it.
We then had the usual unconference format where people can step up and propose their own session, although two of the ten slots are prefilled: one with “what is cloud computing” and the other with “cloud computing business scenario workshop”; check the wiki page to see what we came up with for the other sessions, as well as (hopefully) everyone’s notes on the sessions linked from that page.
I’ll be sticking with the #cloudcamp hashtag after this since it leaves more room for chatter 🙂