Traditional conferences suck

Let’s disrupt the conference format

When I ask around “why do you go to a conference?”, I typically get two answers: a) meet new people, b) get new ideas or inspired.

Meeting new people

How are you meeting new people when you’re sitting passively at a panel listening to a speaker?

The only chance you have is lunch, coffee break, evening activities standing awkwardly around waiting for someone to talk to you.

Get new ideas

For some reason, people express to like panels. I think the learning effect from panels is deceptive.

It’s like a university lecture. You think you learn when you sit there listening. And it has little mental cost, since you’re sitting there passively.

However, learning is much more efficient when you interactively engage with the material. It has a higher mental cost, but that’s how you really learn.

A better way to do conferences

Why don’t we design conferences around the purpose of meeting new people and getting new ideas?

I think the best way to do that is co-create.

Co-creation means you have less scheduled activities. The conference is a blank slate and open for spontaneous contributions.

I experimented with these ideas for the “Build Próspera Summit 2022”.

There were 2h max. scheduled talks. There was a pitch competition the last day. The rest was all networking in a wide open space.

And campfire on the beach.

I loved it, and I want to do more of it! That’s why I’ll organise the upcoming conferences in Prospera this way (see here).

P.S.: Later I learned that the format is called “Unconference”. The Guatemala-based Antigua Forum has pioneered the idea.