Conventional conferences with fixed speakers, tracks, and panels are like trains. To stimulate new practical thinking in emergent areas, a conference needs to be like a hot-air balloon: able to drift a little and explore while still being steerable in real-time. A hot-air balloon conference creates and maintains a space for productive uncertainty. I derive some learnings about this type of unconventional conference from a recent AI conference in Singapore.
Wow, love this so much! I feel like I so often see emergence coming up at the smaller scale of a 5-minute dialogue or meeting, so pushing that to the scale of a conference is...very cool. Would love to hear more about how expectations were set among participants and facilitators to allow for grace and patience while trying out something so unknown.
we could have done a better job of trying to read the preferences of participants when we met them at Day 0 evening drinks and adjusting how the emergent process would be messaged when the conference opened on the morning of Day 1.
Wow, love this so much! I feel like I so often see emergence coming up at the smaller scale of a 5-minute dialogue or meeting, so pushing that to the scale of a conference is...very cool. Would love to hear more about how expectations were set among participants and facilitators to allow for grace and patience while trying out something so unknown.
not well enough, he said ruefully 🥲.
we could have done a better job of trying to read the preferences of participants when we met them at Day 0 evening drinks and adjusting how the emergent process would be messaged when the conference opened on the morning of Day 1.