It’s All About the Conversation

Join us at Los Techies Fiesta Open Space Conference September 30, October 1, & 2.

An Open Space conference is really a different experience than the traditional, presentation driven conference.  While both formats are about learning new things, they go about it in entirely different ways.  An Open Space conference is more about the conversation than anything.  The way I often describe it is if you’ve ever gone to a conference and the most stimulating moment was a conversation in the hallway or break room, that’s an Open Space conference all day long.

If you’ve ever gone to a conference and the most stimulating moment was a conversation in the hallway or break room, that’s an Open Space conference all day long.

The environment is very fluid and active.  This is due to the Law of Two Feet and  the schedule is determined by the attendees.  Unlike a presentation focused event, where you tend to sit still and listen to someone for an hour or more, you are actively encouraged to move around and keep engaged.  If a session isn’t going the way you want, just go to another, or start your own.

The self-organizing aspect of the format is really important.  Even though I am one of the organizers of the event, I have almost no say in  what the topics and sessions are about (I’ll be proposing topics and help organize the proposals, so I have a little say).  And the fact that speakers don’t submit their sessions months in advance, the topics are usually very current and relevant.

At last year’s Los Techies Fiesta, a couple of the sessions really stood out for me.  One of the sessions I proposed was on NoSQL options.  At that time I had never used any of the NoSql tools and knew very little about them, but it was a topic that I wanted to learn more about.  It was an amazing session.  I learned about Mongodb, Cassandra, Redis, and several others.  I learned the difference between document databases, Key Value storage and Column Oriented databases.  Even though I was the “facilitator”, I  knew very little about the topic, everyone their shared their experiences and knowledge for a highly enlightening conversation.

I hope you’ll join us this year and share your knowledge with us!