Hosting an Unconference
This week, Which?’s Product & Technology team held its first Unconference; a full day dedicated to unstructured discussion and debate on a wide breadth of topics. In case you’re not familiar, an Unconference is a participant-driven event designed to dissolve hierarchy and bring to the fore the topics that people most want to discuss in an informal and only lightly structured manner.
We don’t hold these types of events to try and appear a little bit bohemian in the otherwise highly rigorous and structured working culture that we’ve formed over more than 60 years here at Which?. Instead, we hold them because they’re a much-needed breathing point. They’re also one of the many subtle little things that can help shift a more traditional hierarchical culture to a more modern and inclusive one where teams are genuinely encouraged and empowered to take ownership and make decisions.
It’s been an incredibly tough few years as the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone in one way or another. Collaborative hybrid and remote working teams need human connections in order to perform effectively. So bringing people together for in-person events like this feels more important than ever before. Teams also need a work-based pressure valve that decouples them from the relentless day-to-day pursuit of better. We work hard, and it’s important that we make time to recharge and cement our learnings through reflection and headspace too. Most importantly, as a team.
Our topics ranged from “Developing your career”, “VR, metaverse and how to step into a new world from anywhere”, “Beauty in the age of metrics”, “Right to repair” and right through to “The surprising history of some strange local buildings”. There was something for everyone, whatever frame of mind they might have been in for the day. In fact, we acknowledged up front that it’s been a tough few years and simultaneously ran a number of People-lead sessions on ‘Honest Work Communication’ and ‘Let’s Talk’ to demonstrate our understanding and empathy after an emotionally fraught period. Oh, and of course, there was lots of pizza and snacks too!
Just because it’s called an Unconference doesn’t mean there’s no organisation required. In order to be as inclusive as possible, we invite everyone to propose self-organised topics a few weeks in advance. The team then blind votes to bring the most desired sessions to the fore. Every session leader then gets a space, 45 minutes and a few simple ground rules to ensure sessions run in as inclusive and safe a way as possible.
My 3 key takeaways from the day’s sessions were:
- It’s so impactful to have a space where you can laugh and decompress with your colleagues.
- A low-pressure, high psychological safety event is a great opportunity for people to develop presentation skills.
- Knowledge sharing is such a low-friction and accessible means of learning.
Here are a few snaps from our day:
Thanks goes to Stephen McCarthy and Kali Derra for organising the day as well as to all of our speakers and session leads.
All the thoughts are my own.
