Today I'm in at a conference, an unconference that is, about "Online Community". For years I've had this idea of using online community as a means of social change, that by helping people connect on a given topic they can use an online community forum to discuss that topic, resolve problems, help each other learn the topic, etc. An online community focused on a specific topic can focus attention on that topic.
The conference is still in the early morning gathering stage. People wandering around getting coffee and snacks (labeled "breakfast"), chatting with each other, etc. I ran into a colleague from my job, except today I'm purposely not labeling myself as a Sun employee because what I do with online community is outside the scope of my job at Sun.
In any case it's a little early yet to see how this day will go and what we will cover.
Being an unconference there is no agenda on the board in front. The board in front, which will eventually hold the agenda, is currently blank. There's some statements on the principles of Open Space meetings such as: "If you are not learning or contributing it is your responsibility to find somewhere you are" .. grammar problems aside that's a very interesting statement. This is my first time attending an OpenSpace style conference and I'm just as much interested in this style of meeting as I am in meeting people about online community.