Yesterday’s MetroPlus, The Hindu’s supplement, carried an impressive half page writeup about Unconferences. The article talks about the new emergence of unconferences and its growth in popularity amongst the techies. You can read the online version here or click on the newspaper screenshot to enlarge it.
(Image from Sriram Iyer)
The article also mentions about the Unconference book, which has been seeing a slow but a steady progress.
The article carries a lot more credibility because, its author, Sudhir Syal has attended unconferences and is also helping organize a couple of them.
There’s also been some interesting learning based on feedback from Lisa Heft, a contributor to the unconference book project from the US. Open Space Technology, the original form of what we now known as unconferences, has been in existence since 1985. Wow, that’s for two decades. And most of us think its a recent phenomenon. Or at least I thought so, until we started the book project.
And its just not the technology industry that’s using the unconference format. Lisa adds, “It is something that has been around for a long time across the world and in a huge diversity of industries, cultures, and countries”.
Who would’ve thought!
Also, it looks like The Hindu would not credit the photographer whose photo has been used in the article. In spite of Sudhir, the author, taking the effort to get permission to use the photograph. It may have been an oversight, though.
But a huge thanks to The Hindu for giving unconferences main stream coverage. It can do wonders with getting better participation and better support from corporates.
