Emergent Ventures has an Unconference [random, concentrated breakthroughs]

Tyler Cowen's Emergent Ventures recently had an Unconference to celebrate its one-year anni versary. Craig Palsson attended and then went immediately to a standard academic conference. He compares the two.

Making connections:

The Unconference was designed to forge new connections. Conferences are advertised as a way to create connections, but they usually don’t create a good environment for it. Sessions are organized by a series of papers, and you typically attend the session related to your work. If I work on financial panics, I go to the session with related papers, and so do all of the people in my field. Over the three days, I discover that I’m usually with the same people, because we have similar interests, and I never interact with most people at the conference. [...]

Contrast this with the Unconference. It started with a reception, which is typical of such events. But then at dinner we sat at tables by birthday, inserting some randomness into our conversation partners. Then halfway through dinner, Tyler shuffled the seating arrangements so we would have new conversation partners. Then during the Unconference sessions, participants were randomly assigned to groups for 45 minute discussions. Generally there was an understanding that people were welcome to walk into a conversation and join. [...]

Hierarchy (vs. anarchy?):

The Unconference did not have a hierarchy of achievement. Anyone who has been to a Conference understands there are hierarchies. On the final day of the Conference, I’m eating breakfast, and two others are at the same table with me. I don’t know them, so I start a conversation. But then one of the most prominent people at the Conference sits at the table. Unashamed, I abandon the first conversation and focus solely on the important person. If this person knows and likes me, that could benefit my career, so I’m not going to waste an opportunity.

I’m writing these observations the day after the breakfast, and I’ve already forgotten the names of the two people I started the conversation with.

But at the Unconference, I did not see a hierarchy. There was an implicit assumption that everyone was working on something interesting, and therefore everyone had something to contribute. Indeed, one of the notes I made in my journal was a comment made by an 18 year old participant. This is the aspect of the Unconference that I think will be hardest to transfer to a Conference.

H/t Tyler Cowen.

Addendum: This random connection thing, I wonder, does that come from the nascent world view Cowen has been trying out:  Toward a theory of random, concentrated breakthroughs (2.28.2019):

I don’t (yet?) agree with what is to follow, but it is a model of the world I have been trying to flesh out, if only for the sake of curiosity. Here are the main premises:

1. For a big breakthrough in some area to come, many different favorable inputs had to come together. So the Florentine Renaissance required the discovery of the right artistic materials at the right time (e.g., good tempera, then oil paint), prosperity in Florence, guilds and nobles interested in competing for status with artistic commissions, relative freedom of expression, and so on.

2. To some extent, but not completely, the arrival of those varied inputs is random. Big breakthroughs are thus hard to predict and also hard to control.