What is an Open Space conference?
On October 19th through October 21st 2023, I joined the SoCraTes IT (Software Craft and Testing conference) in Rimini. SoCraTes is an international network of conferences that uses the Open Space format as their fingerprint.
In this post, I’ll share my experience at SoCraTes IT 2023 to give you a feel of an Open Space conference.
Just enough theory to start: four principles and one law
Open Space conferences, sometimes referred to as unconferences, are based on the idea of conference participants as a self-managing team. In the early 1980s, conference organizer Harrison Owen learned that the moment participants valued the most in his conference were coffee breaks. Drawing from this experience, Open Space conferences run on four principles and one law:
- Whoever comes is the right people
- Whenever it starts is the right time
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
- When it’s over it’s over
- The Law Of Two Feet: If at any time you find that you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet and move to some place more to you liking.
My perception of SoCraTes IT 2023 very much resonates with this sentence from the AgileCoachCamp Wiki:
In OpenSpace there are no leaders, no followers, definitely no talking-heads — only participants.
All participants actively shape the conference, both individually and collectively.
Day #1 — Breaking the ice
I’ll start with one confession: When I arrived in Rimini on Thursday for the conference, I knew none of the participants. I admit I was feeling a bit anxious about this while I dropped my bags in my hotel room. 😱
I took a deep breath. Then, I approached a merry group taking a puff outside the conference venue and introduced myself. From this very first moment, I was blown away by how approachable and welcoming other participants were. I didn’t feel like a stranger for a second. The fact that we hadn’t met before seemed irrelevant.
This situation fuelled my courage and propelled me from one small casual conversation to the next through the conference aperitivo and over dinner.
I was not entirely aware that the best part of the day had yet to come. After dinner, all participants met in the largest conference room. Here, the conference facilitator kicked off an icebreaker session to help us get to know each other a little better and have some fun together.
We were randomly divided in small groups (3–6 people) and each group randomly picked one card from a deck. We had 15 minutes to collaboratively produce a short sketch (3–5 minutes) based on the theme on this card. The goal was to play this sketch in front of the full house (90 people). My group had the following theme: “All meetings should be held in dialect”. Definitely not an easy one! Eventually, we were able to put together a couple of ideas, just enough to be able to go live — perfection is the enemy of good. And we did go live in front of the full house, just as everybody else in the conference!
Once we faced this trial, the ice was broken for good. Delivering a presentation on the next day seemed a piece of cake now. We had already done it, fully survived and had a good laugh in the process — stage fright begone! 😃
Day #2 — Proposing and leading a session
On Friday morning, the facilitator opened the Space with the goal to collaboratively create the agenda for the day, represented by a board with multiple time slots and conference rooms.
Participants could now grab sticky notes and markers to write down session proposals. And so did I. I grabbed a sticky note and wrote my proposal. Session proposals could be:
- a presentation,
- a shorter presentation followed by a request for feedback or question for the audience, or
- an open discussion around a proposed theme.
To include international participants — 2 people from the UK, 1 person from Serbia, 1 person from Switzerland — the official language of the conference was English. Session presenters were free to choose to present in Italian if they weren’t fluent in English or had only Italian speakers in the audience. Session language was a mandatory info for session proposals.
I queued up with other people until it was my turn to introduce my proposal to the audience. Then, I placed my sticky note on the board to book a conference room at a given time slot for my session.
Next, it was marketplace time! It really looks what it sounds like. Participants gathered around the board and could negotiate with session proponents to move their session to a different slot/room. The session proponents had the final decision on their session slot/room.
The resulting agenda looked like this, with my session scheduled at 15.30 in the Quarzo room:
Although I had prepared slides for my session, I chose to follow my gut feeling and go for a more spontaneous approach.
🧠 Starting from the brain-teasing question “To read or not to read?”, we brainstormed about tech training.
📚 Then, I shared my experience in our Book Club, the feedback I got from participants and what I did about it.
🗣️ An inspiring open discussion followed about discovering our training comfort zone — plus when and how to leave it to cross the shark tank. 🦈
Day #2 & #3 — Attending sessions, serendipitous chats and evening extras
You know the drill: each new conference day starts with opening the Space, gathering proposals and trading slots in the marketplace. By now, you also know what the possible session formats are.
The session proposals ranged from training to AI, from product management to React.js, from hands-on projects to discussions about the big questions in software engineering, from CI/CD to engineering books.
Day #1:
Day #2:
To top it all off, tons of serendipitous chats over breakfast, lunch, dinner and at the coffee buffet, an evening theatrical play session about Object Oriented Programming and impromptu coding-sessions. I don’t remember ever sitting idle in one corner.
Bottom line
This has been an incredible experience, both as a conference speaker and participant. I was impressed by the potential that the Open Space format can unlock.
In addition to Italy, SoCraTes conferences are hosted in other countries including Finland, France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK.
I can’t recommend putting events with this format on your conferences radar enough.
