This year for PDC 2008, we have decided to learn from a successful model used by various customers (like the ALT.NET crowd) in order to help ensure that PDC 2008 is the best conference ever. Our goal with these un-sessions is to really enable attendees with common interests to have some great conversations in an efficient setting.
So what is Open Space? Taken from the description we have on the PDC website (you can also refer to the Open Space Technology entry in Wikipedia):
Open Space is a way to bring together groups of people interested in a common topic to have an interactive discussion. In an Open Space session, there may be an expert who is passionate about a topic presenting to an audience or there may be a small group of people discussing an idea.
Four principles of Open Space:
- Whoever comes are the right people to be there
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
- Whenever it starts is the right time
- When it's over, it's over
All you need to do is suggest topics onsite that you wish to discuss and participate in sessions that sound interesting to you. It’s the unconference with content by attendees, for attendees.
Not only are we doing Open Space at PDC 2008, we want to make sure it is a _real_ Open Space. None of this "Microsoft doesn't understand, they don't grok it, they entirely and utterly butchered the whole Open Space concept".
Not only are we passionate about this topic, we are also fans of the Open Space movement. Of course there will be modifications that will have to be made to scale this to the size of a PDC as well as the fact that this is more of a "conference within a conference", but we hope those changes will keep the essence of Open Space unchanged.
If you have any concerns about Open Space @ PDC 2008, you can contact me directly at jason.olsonATmicrosoftDOTcom. I would love to hear from any of you regarding this topic. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you in L.A. participating in Open Space @ PDC 2008! FOR THE DEVELOPERS!!!!