Quick Peeks

Lisa Devaney

More and more popular among business gatherings is effort by organizers to create a new approach to the traditional format of bringing an industry together. Instead of trade show display booths filling a venue, and a roster of lectures from industry leaders being the standard highlights, the new business generation is seeking out events that offer more interaction, collaboration and fun.

Last week in London at The Hub in Kings Cross, social entrepreneurs attended Shine 09, billed as an "unconference" that offered up one-to-one mentoring, creative brainstorming, a social collaboration game, and a party where the British Urban Collective performed. Over the unconference's two day run, participants joined in on workshops that aimed to cultivate new ideas, and help steer these concepts to execution. *Note, definitely better to refer to everyone as a participant than just a passive attendant, as everyone got invovled!

“The difference here is that last year’s event was a very urban-guerrilla, anarchist feel to it and this year it is business, with a focused switch from pre- to post- recession and a real display of determination of people who want to make real world change happen,” said Cliff Prior, Chief Executive of UnLtd.

Shine joins a number of creative conferences coming up, both in the UK and USA, that are styled after predecessor's BarCamp , Foo Camp, and SXSW, all which take inspiration from the unconference concept. While there is still a market for, and a majority expectation, for the traditional business conference, which is a billion-pound industry, new thinkers are mixing things up and attracting a diverse combination of brand-name sponsors, high-profile participants, and entrepreneurial micro-businesses that seem to all benefit from exchanging energy and ideas with each other.

“Our aim with Shine is to never have talented people sit in a room and just clap, we need to give interaction, space and structure to fill out the event with ideas and see inspiration turn to perspiration,” Prior said.  

Upcoming untraditional conferences include:

bTWEEN (11-12 June 2009, Liverpool), an interactive digital media forum.

2gether09, a London summer conference run in festival style, that aims to explore and celebrate how technology can be used to promote social progress.

Over The Air, a September London mobile development gathering spaced over two days of fun, learning, hacking and socializing with participants camping over night.

Fees for the events are affordable and range from £30-£100, often free for students.

I've also written about Shine09 on DigitalJournal.com, please see my post here.

Shine on,

-Lisa

PS: Have you attended a non-traditional conference recently, what did you think? Are you going to a creative conference? Which one? Comments about creative conferencing welcome.