Unconference

Thursday, 7 February 2019

Arts West Building, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, Melbourne

The unconference will take place in the digital studio on level 2. Please come to the atrium to register and we will direct you.

For the first time, the International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC) will offer an Unconference, a day-long session for interactive and spontaneous discussion on topics suggested by you. This will be similar to the highly successful Birds of a Feather (BoF) session, which used to take place on the second day of the main conference. You can read more about it in the DCC blog post.

Contribute ideas for topics

You will be able to suggest topics up until the end of the main conference, 5 pm on 6th of February 2019. We have 5 ideas so far!

Send us more ideas

We are also asking attendees to fill in a pre-unconference survey (it's only 5 short questions!) so we can understand your needs and better tailor the day. Please fill in the survey here.

Meet the organisers

Seven of us will help steer the unconference. Our role is to help seed discussions and provide whatever support you need to run the sessions. We will also encourage you to come back into plenary periodically to feedback and select new topics to work on.

• Sarah Jones, Digital Curation Centre, UK
• Adam Bell, AARnet, Australia
• Angeletta Leggio, University of Melbourne, Australia
• Niklas Zimmer, University of Cape Town, South Africa
• Carolyn Hank, University of Tennessee, USA
• Peter Neish, University of Melbourne, Australia
• Jaye Weatherburn, University of Melbourne, Australia

Programme

Notes from the sessions

Etherpad

Andrew Treloar's blog post about the event

Session types & Session Information

Below are some ideas for types of sessions, but this list is not exhaustive, and you are free to decide what works best for you.

• Group Discussion: Pick a topic you’re interested in and form a discussion around it. If you loved a talk at the conference, perhaps propose further discussion on the topic it addressed.
• Learn about, or how to do X: If you’re inclined to teach, just make sure you bring whatever gear you need, and that you have some plan for teaching 5, 10 or 15 people how to do something all at the same time.
• Fishbowl Dialogues: This format can be used to explore a particular question or set of questions.

The basic idea is that a centre group engages in a discussion (circle of 5-8 chairs in the centre), while an outer group listens (there will rows of chairs radiating out for the centre).

Those in the centre circle can either be selected or volunteer from the group. You may want to start out with a group comprised of people with different opinions on a topic, or different areas of experience. Or you can let the group form as it will.

In most Fish Bowl Dialogues, there is one chair left empty in the centre circle. This chair is open for someone else to step into. When someone steps into the empty chair one of the existing centre circle people should self-select and step out so there is always one empty chair.

• Show and tell: You have a cool project, a demo, or just something to show and let people play with that is the springboard for all the conversation in the session. Alternatively, you can invite others to bring their own items to show and tell (perhaps with a theme), and everyone takes a turn sharing.
• Knowledge café: This form can also be used to explore a question or set of questions. The knowledge café begins with the participants seated in a circle of chairs (or concentric circles of chairs if the group is large or the room is small). The facilitator introduces the café topic and poses one or two key open-ended questions.

Then, the group breaks into small groups, with about five people in each group. Each small group discusses the questions for about 45 minutes. The small group discussions are not led by a facilitator, and no summary of the discussion is captured for subsequent feedback to the large group.

Participants then return to the circle and the facilitator leads the group through the final 45-minute session, in which people reflect on the small group discussions and share any thoughts, insights and ideas on the topic that may have emerged. A knowledge café is most effective with between 15 and 50 participants – about thirty is ideal.