I admit that I am old enough to remember an ad campaign many years ago for the soft drink 7-Up where they referred to the product as the “Un-Cola” (WARNING: YouTube uncaptioned video) . I know, I’m showing my age.
This thought hit me as I was signing up to attend the Boston Accessibility “Unconference” a few weeks ago. After reading the introduction and description on their website, I found it strangely reminiscent of the “happenings” we engaged in when I was a youth in high school and college. Very avant-garde, I thought; I’m in.
So with open expectations and my colleague Steve Sawczyn (a.k.a. @steveofmaine) riding shotgun, I ventured the three hours down to Waltham, MA this Saturday to see what would “happen.” I will admit that I was surprised by some things and not others. There were good things and disappointments. The experience reminded me vaguely of the first Tweetup I attended about a year ago; meeting a bunch of people whom I knew only through digital correspondences, blog posts and Tweets. I was quickly putting faces with “avatars” and changing my impressions at a steady pace.
There will be a formal evaluation process for the Boston Accessibility Unconference and when that comes out, I will take the opportunity to provide my full opinions there. But I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect upon the experience and post that information here while it was relatively fresh in my mind. I’ve organized my thoughts into three statements. Feel free to respond or generate your own ideas. Here are the three statements:
- What it was
- What it wasn’t
- What I would like it to be in the future
What it was
The Boston Accessibility Unconference was a gathering of about 80 fairly diverse folks who were interested in the accessibility of information technology. Like me, most seemed interested in the vicissitudes of accessible web design, but there were a number of folks whose interests appeared to branch into other areas of technology. There were a fair number of people with disabilities among the gathering.
The setting was the beautifully modern Waltham facilities of the Adobe Corporation provided by host Andrew Kirkpatrick, Adobe’s product manager for accessibility. The building featured all the latest gizmos and the most high tech restrooms on the planet. If you haven’t had a chance to hear Steve Sawczyn’s report of the skin-removing hand dryers in the men’s room, you are missing a rewarding experience. I will think of this place when I sent a hunk of cash to Adobe in a few weeks to purchase CS5 (again Warning: I don’t know if this link leads to an accessible website)
The agenda for the day was pretty free-flowing: an initial warm-up-welcome activity to create an “agenda,” four breakout periods where topics were assigned through a groupthink process, and various breaks for social interaction.
Several of the sessions that I attended were rather free-flowing with no one really taking charge and a general open exchange of ideas and opinions (some included with “hand grenades”; sorry Andrew). On the contrary, several of the sessions I attended were somewhat controlled by one or two individuals who had brought a PowerPoint presentation and seemed determined to give it whether people wanted to hear it or not.
What it wasn’t
I have to be careful here. I don’t want to sound critical or petulant because overall, the experience was very positive. But I didn’t get everything I wanted. So, if I frame this as what I was hoping for – and didn’t get – may be no one will be offended.
I was hoping for a larger picture (big picture) perspective and understanding of accessibility. I spend a lot of time in my head thinking about this topic in very global terms and I wanted to meet like-creatures and compare notes. I think they were in the room, but I didn’t have an opportunity to find many of them.
I was hoping to learn new things about areas I was interested in. I sensed a general backward reflection process or “this is what I do” attitude and was hoping for more of a what do we need to do differently attitude.
Like Guy Noir, I was hoping to find answers to life’s most persistent questions.
What I would like it to be in the future
I would like there to be a professional facilitator or facilitators who are not knowledgeable or interested in the topic of accessibility who can keep things on target.
I would like there to be more in the way of preparation beforehand so everyone can hit the ground running.
I would like for there to be more time to socialize. I would like there to be more time.
I would like to narrow down the focus to a couple of topics (may be three) and deal with them – I would like this to have been done before I got there. In essence, I want a little less “un” in the unconference.
I would like folks to leave the PowerPoints at home and just talk about the topics.
I would like everyone to be an expert and no one to be an expert. Yeah, you can tell I’m a child of the ’60s on that one!
I would like (and am still hoping for) a continued conversation. Perhaps that’s why I wrote this.
Final Thoughts
I’d like to truly thank all those who organized this. It was a risky activity and I think it came off wonderfully. I would like to particularly thank the sponsors for their financial and in-kind contributions. I promise to do whatever I can to make this happen again.
I don’t think it is unreasonable to “pass the hat” or pay a few bucks to be there.
I hope we do not wait a year for another Boston Accessibility Unconference. The topic and the work is too important. I would like almost a monthly (daily, hourly) opportunity to converse – there has to be a technology that we can use to do this. We should make that the first priority.
How can I help?
What do you think?
Feel free to comment!
No related posts.
I’m glad you’re experience of your first unconference was mostly positive. That may be the best we can hope for. It was my experience at my first Unconference at Gov 2.0 in DC a couple of years ago. I am sure that the coordination of individual unconferences (or barbcamps) varies widely from place to place and around different topics as well. I think Accessibility may be one of those areas that is simply weak on organization – perhaps simply because it’s such a hard sell. But I agree, the work is too important, it must go on. I would love to see one happen in my neck of the woods (Texas). Barcamps happen all the time in Austin, so we might actually have some success with at least the organizational part of it. The willing audience is the problem. I was very impressed with the DC event, we had very little of the Power Point issues, but I think we had great leadership on the organizing committee. What is nice about Unconferences is that usually there is a wiki where session offers could be posted in advance if people could be directed to it and the rules should be spelled out there as well. Also, I think the success of any Unconference will depend on promotion and buzz. I know you had some good people there since I’m friends with at least one attendee. Unconferences depend on committed volunteers to happen. Perhaps you should organize the next one.
Oh, and I’m old enough to remember the Un-Cola promotion.
“Perhaps you should organize the next one.” Hi Ho!
Actually, I worked for an organization for almost 10 years that organized conferences. I know what it takes to pull these things off and appreciate the efforts of all. Not sure I want to go back to that, and take the lead, without getting paid
.
But honestly, I would be willing to serve on the committee to do it again..but probably as a non-un-conference.
John,
It was good to see you last weekend. I agree that the event would benefit from more structure in some ways while allowing more freeflowing discussion in others, but was generally happy with the event and hope we do it again.
I’m glad you like the Adobe facility – it is a LEED Platinum certified building, as are all new Adobe buildings, so the 400MPH hand dryer isn’t just interesting, it is part of the package.
Thanks for the report!
AWK