In 1983, an American consultant named Harrison Owen arranged a conference on leadership on which he worked for a year. The conference went well yet … everyone, including himself, thought the best part of the conference were the coffee breaks … here the most interesting conversations emerged …
So he thought, “If I have worked on something for a year, and the best part is the only thing I haven’t prepared – what would a conference look like, where the coffee breaks are the main thing? How would you practically go about organizing such a thing?”
What followed was a way of conferencing where preparations were focused on the invitation and the physical setting, and the content creation was left to the conference day itself and solely to the participants. Could never work!
Later, this way of conferencing has sometimes been referred to “unconferencing” or “open space” – and the preparatory structure as “open space technology”. I accidentally found myself in one in 2010 in Amsterdam and have never looked back.