The Wide Open Space of Ideas

It has been a busy week at Zenergy. Last weekend we trekked to Raleigh, NC to attend the Continuous Integration Conference—Citcon, which is pronounced “kit” as in "kitten." We’d been pronouncing it “sitcon” the whole time before we arrived. So were many other attendees until we heard the organizers pronounce it in the welcome meeting. Then on Monday, we jumped on a plane and flew to Dallas for QAI’s Quest Conference.

Citcon was interesting because it runs the conference using Open Space. If you are not familiar with the concept, you can read about it in detail here, but the general idea is the conference participants set the agenda by proposing subjects they want to discuss, then everyone votes on the topics. Some attendees volunteer as facilitators, typically individuals who are familiar, if not experts on the agreed upon topics, but the ensuing sessions are essentially discussions where ideas and information flow freely back and forth. At first, I was skeptical of the Open Space format, but I left the conference energized by it.

Open Space World claims the technique can accommodate up to 2000 attendees, but I have never seen a bigger conference use it. Citcon was limited to 150 participants, although that may have had nothing to do with the format. Though I'm unsure how well Open Space would work with a conference as big as QAI Quest—or Stareast, which occurs in Orlando, FL this upcoming week—after roaming the Quest corridors, I realize it may be a moot point. Those “Open Space” discussions happened regardless. Most sessions at Quest were good, but the impromptu conversations happening in the hallways and alcoves and restaurants, were dynamic and informative in a way the presentations could never be. Formal presentations will always have their place, but maybe part of that “place” is to excite participants to run to the halls afterward to discuss what they heard in a group of their peers and maybe even with the presenter who wanders by and gets pulled in. Perhaps the Open Space format at Citcon appealed to me because it’s what many of us naturally gravitate toward anyway: excellent conversations spurred by ideas. After the back-to-back conferences using different formats, I’ve realized those "side" conversations are what has made the bigger conferences so great this whole time anyway.

In IT, we have a tendency to focus on the technology: the new tools, the evolving platforms, the unending acronyms that overwhelmed us when we were all newbies. But Open Space and the hallway discussions at QAI Quest, were great reminders that our industry really is—and always has been—about people and the open exchange of ideas. Let’s hope we never lose sight of that truth.