Skeptics take note. This coming weekend something special is afoot in Chicago. It’s their first open skeptic conference which they’re dubbing “Skepchicamp“, a portmanteau of Skepchick and SkeptiCamp.
Organizers expect a strong turnout of 80 with a diverse roster of 20+ speakers for the day. They did gangbusters in raising money for the event — the first such fundraiser held to keep the event free to participants.
They’ve nailed collaboration in their organizing efforts, keeping their efforts visible to all through their website, Twitter and facebook feeds. This sets a standard for other SkeptiCamp organizers to emulate.
Even more worthy of note, they are innovating in a way that promises to overcome a key challenge facing SkeptiCamp.
As far as conference models go, SkeptiCamp (based on the tech-oriented BarCamp) is among the most lightweight. It does have its rules and practices to make for substantive, fun and engaging events, but these are few in number and flexible, allowing for organizers to tailor an event as needed.
One such practice encourages first-time speakers, which keeps the event fresh and provides ready opportunities for new people to get involved. Another key practice asks that attendees interact with the speakers during their talks. This stands to engage the attendee at a level not seen at a traditional lecture-oriented event. It also provides for some level of crowdsourced quality control.
Open events have their challenges, however. Left to themselves the speaker roster will favor the assertive, competitive and vain personality types (of mostly white guys, but there are of course exceptions.) As a result those of us reluctant to deal with such types will often decline to participate. This is poison to open events and a symptom of failure.
The naive remedy is to program the event and take away the openness. This requires recruiting someone to act in the role of gatekeeper — a conference programmer who decides which talks and speakers are worthy of the event.
That too is a failure. Requiring a programmer will make these events more difficult to organize. Having a programmer will produce a conference whose ‘balance’ risks reflecting the biases and social circle of the programmer.
That is not the SkeptiCamp way. SkeptiCamp asks that we retain openness while developing practices which overcome the challenges of open events.
Whether they realize it or not, the organizers of Skepchicamp have innovated in an important way that stands to address this problem, very simply by encouraging the participation of women in much the same way that BarCamp asks us to encourage first-time speakers.
In practical terms, those acting in the role of “Speaker Wrangler” for the event will prevail upon both men and women to give talks. However, in being aware of the personality types who might otherwise dominate an event, they can tailor their search as well as to set an expectation that the tone will be welcoming of all.
Those lucky enough to live in the Chicago area can view the result firsthand on Saturday. The rest of us will have to watch the Skepchicamp Twitter feed and read of the accounts on participant blogs.
March 3, 2010 at 7:47 am
I can attest to the fact that our planning committee continually encouraged women and new speakers. When there were hints of a possible ‘headliner’ type of speaker, I…being a bit wary of this whole public speaking thing (80 people? what?)…was amongst the first to offer up my spot. Elyse et al would have none of it! So…we’ll see how it goes Saturday.
