Have You Been to an Unconference?
On Day 1, the participants at the EV unconference “build the wall” with handwritten Post-It notes describing topics they’d like to lead in separate one-hour discussions. Photo: Stefan Roots
Many of us have attended traditional conferences, with a set agenda, a keynote speaker, and a bunch of pre-planned workshops. Unconferences are different: they leave it up to the participants to figure out what they want to discuss and how to organize discussions. Their purpose is somewhat vaguely defined, their format is a bit mushy, and their outcome is unpredictable.
I’ve had the honor and pleasure of attending both unconferences held by Emergent Ventures (EV) (a fellowship and grant program of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center)—thanks to having received an EV grant in 2018 for my work in community journalism. I’d define EV unconferences as exchanges of global human intellect, culture, opinion, talent, and wonder.
About 40 people from around the world participated in the first EV unconference, in 2019. (There was no unconference in 2020 due to COVID, but EV continued to award grants.) The 2021 EV unconference attracted more than 100 participants—who traveled from lands near and far for a meetup in the Washington, DC, area.
“Meeting and mingling” is probably the best way to describe the experience at an EV unconference. Tyler Cowen, the founder of the Mercatus Center—and the guy who determines who gets the EV grants—designs this weekend--long event to maximize opportunities for people to connect. The outcome is unique to each participant, based on who you meet, what you discuss, and how good you are at deciphering other people’s accents—particularly those of people from India, Europe, London, and Silicon Valley.
A young man from India is the developer of PLASCRETE, a high-strength building material made from unrecyclable plastic waste that is 24 times stronger, eight times lighter, and four times more cost effective than concrete. Photo: Stefan Roots
The event isn’t totally chaotic—but close to it. After a brief gathering to welcome participants and explain the ground rules, the first exercise on Day 1 is to “build the wall”: participants plaster handwritten Post-It notes to a wall, describing topics they’d like to lead in separate one-hour discussions—choosing from categories such as “your ambitions,” “your production function,” “your biggest challenge,” and “your own adventure.” The topics that folks come up with can be pointed, vague, funny, unreadable, intimidating, or mystifying. Then participants have ten minutes to decide which of these discussions they want to join, find a room, and start talking. There’s nothing stopping anyone from jumping out of their seat to join another discussion group, and some discussions get commandeered away from the person supposedly leading the group by a more informed, interesting, or charismatic personality. It’s a true free-for-all of knowledge-slinging. No one knows in advance what information will end up sticking.
One feature of an EV unconference is a consistently high level of noise. Everyone is talking to each other the whole time in groups and one-on-one discussions. Sometimes several group discussions are being held in a single room, and sometimes they are in a hallway, or on a bus, or at a restaurant. All 100 people travel around together the whole weekend, so the buzz is unending. It’s both exhilarating and exhausting.
There are a lot of very young people at the unconference, and their energy is as endless as you’d expect. My favorite comment at this year’s event came after several of us had left a large group that was gathered in a hallway chatting it up while sipping coffee and eating popsicles and gourmet cookies: in the elevator, I bumped into a guy who was probably in his mid-40s. It was around 10 p.m., and we both looked like we were about to pass out from exhaustion as we scrambled to find our room keys. He looked at me and said, “These kids … I feel obsolete—but inspired.”
It’s impossible in this short article to describe all the connections I made, but here are a few of the most interesting:
S.M. from India is co-founder of Queen’s English, which teaches people from low-income towns and villages how to speak English for $1 per student, per class. He predicted that learning the English language is the currency that will break the generational cycle of poverty in India. His company is in the process of scaling up—hoping to teach as many as a billion people in that region.
P.M. from India is the developer of PLASCRETE, a high-strength building material made from unrecyclable plastic waste that is 24 times stronger, eight times lighter, and four times more cost effective than concrete. He brought small brick-size samples of the material to the event. When I mentioned that my city has a trash incinerator that burns a lot of plastic, he shook his head in disgust and said we’d be better off digging holes in our backyard to get rid of our trash. This 20 year old is one to watch.
W.Z. from New York City is a senior in high school working on how to use machine learning to produce positive outcomes. He’s already a cybersecurity expert and is leading a new venture to develop secure, verifiable, cloud-based artificial intelligence.
A.B. from India, a data scientist and the co-founder of Infinite Analytics, led a discussion on data democracy. Other data scientists joined the group and asked a lot of questions that had my head spinning. Clearly A.B.’s company is way ahead of the curve in this industry. Silly me asked how much it costs to subscribe to his service. It was more than I could afford, but he kindly offered to share with me some data-driven results related to the 19013 zip code, as a favor.
A.B. from Toronto, co-founder of HelpWare, has developed a wearable medical device that reliably detects conditions that could lead to a stroke. He also works in the longevity industry, studying what makes people age and how to reverse that process. I asked him if his results are similar to the fictional ones in the 1992 movie Death Becomes Her. He hadn’t heard of the movie: he was probably two years old when it came out.
E.X. of Washington State has created a sport called Word Golf. It was super interesting to me even though I still can’t explain it. In my attempt to get more clarity, I called it a game: he firmly corrected me, saying it was a sport. I won’t make that mistake again.
K.R. of South Africa is running fintech companies in London. I had never heard the term fintech before: it is short for financial-services technology. (As Kevin Hart says, “You gonna learn today!”) K.R. and I got to know each other on the bus ride to and from one of the event’s field trips. I got to share all my fascinations about South Africa, including its politics, apartheid, Mandela, and the recent death of DeKlerk. We even talked about my favorite South African musical artists: Brenda Fassie, Mariam Makeba, and Jonathan Butler. I told him about my favorite British TV shows. He said that he and his wife’s favorite new American web series is Mare of Easttown. How cool is that?
P.Y. dropped out of school to start a company that provides people with the services of highly trained virtual administrative assistants. I guess there’s no stigma in having dropped out of school when you’ve studied at Stanford and Oxford, been named a Thiel Fellow, and been a researcher at Microsoft Research India.
And then there’s C.W., who invited folks to come listen to him talk about the World’s Fair. Curiosity got the better of me, and I sat in on one of his sessions. “Wait—what?” This dude really is looking to stage the next World’s Fair. I didn’t realize that there hadn’t been one since 1984. If you hear that a new World’s Fair is coming to a town near you, I’ll bet chances are that it’s the work of C.W.
Needless to say, being an Emergent Ventures winner is prestigious and has its privileges. I am still overwhelmed that this little blogger from Chester, Pennsylvania, was chosen along with some of the world’s best and brightest minds to be part of this club. At the first EV unconference, I asked Tyler Cowen why he had chosen me. He simply said that I’m the only person he knows who does what I do, and it needs to be supported and duplicated across the globe.
I’d say that’s an endorsement to hang my hat on.
