How many conferences have you been to when the sessions you went to didn't feel worth your time to attend? How about how many conferences have you been to where you felt you had enough time to talk with colleagues? How many have you been to where you felt you learned from everyone in the room? How about when you felt like you had heard multiple sides of a discussion about a topic? How about where you had a chance to really engage with the topic rather than ask only one superficial question "in the interest of time?" This seminar will be focused on the topic of unconferences, described as a way to take advantage of the Fundamental Law of Conventional Conferences: "The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage." (http://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/03/05/what-is-an-unconference/). We'll go over a couple of examples of unconferences, then engage folks in the audience in a discussion to design more effective and helpful conference sessions. If you are new to the topic, or an old hand, do join in this conversation!