Mint Covers UnConferences
Namita Jagadeesh has a nice write up about UnConferences on Mint, the new business newspaper from The Hindustan Times in partnership with The Wall Street Journal.
The article is nicely titled ‘Start(up) Networking‘, focusing on the networking and ideas exchange that is the mainstay of such events. Nice read.
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The Growth Pangs of a New Sport
Yesterday, both Times of India and DNA newspapers carried news about our group playing the new sport ‘Ultimate Frisbee’. Ever since, Membership requests multiplied. While generally that’s a good thing, sudden growth isn’t good for a new sport. Manu, who brought the game from the US to ISB and then to Chennai, has a few good points.
The game can accommodate 14 members (7 a side). Anything more, and people will have to wait in the sidelines. and that’s no fun.
It’s a new game and it takes awhile to master the nuances.. Sure, the rules are simple but one needs sufficient play time to get better at the game. But we play only one hour every week and that’s not much.
Taking a few other points into consideration, it was decided to close down any new registrations for a couple of months. And we even had to gently turn down a request from The Hindu to do a story.
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The Hindu on Unconferences
Yesterday’s MetroPlus, The Hindu’s supplement, carried an impressive half page writeup about Unconferences. The article talks about the new emergence of unconferences and its growth in popularity amongst the techies. You can read the online version here or click on the newspaper screenshot to enlarge it.
(Image from Sriram Iyer)
The article also mentions about the Unconference book, which has been seeing a slow but a steady progress.
The article carries a lot more credibility because, its author, Sudhir Syal has attended unconferences and is also helping organize a couple of them.
There’s also been some interesting learning based on feedback from Lisa Heft, a contributor to the unconference book project from the US. Open Space Technology, the original form of what we now known as unconferences, has been in existence since 1985. Wow, that’s for two decades. And most of us think its a recent phenomenon. Or at least I thought so, until we started the book project.
And its just not the technology industry that’s using the unconference format. Lisa adds, “It is something that has been around for a long time across the world and in a huge diversity of industries, cultures, and countries”.
Who would’ve thought!
Also, it looks like The Hindu would not credit the photographer whose photo has been used in the article. In spite of Sudhir, the author, taking the effort to get permission to use the photograph. It may have been an oversight, though.
But a huge thanks to The Hindu for giving unconferences main stream coverage. It can do wonders with getting better participation and better support from corporates.
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