The Shape of a Very Different Type of Conference

I'm at Dangerously Ambitious in Silicon Valley, an event hosted by San Francisco-based venture accelerator Sparkseed. The event is self-consciously trying to provide a different experience from other conferences out there. Here's what that looks like:

1. Small Size: The event registration was capped at about 65 people. The point is to create an intimacy that can extend beyond a small portion of the conference attendees. What tends to happen in bigger events is that people hew pretty closely to those they already know. The Global Engagement Summit we used to run at Northwestern always capped attendance around 80, and it made a huge difference.

2. Primary Emphasis on Social Experiences: There is this ironic thing that happens with most conferences I see, which is that they all recognize that everyone comes for the other people who are there, but then they still spend a huge amount of time and money creating content that ultimately gets in the way of people interacting. DA has taken a different approach, and allocated the majority of the weekend to social experiences that get attendees interacting with each other in formal and informal ways. Last night, for example, the first event of the weekend was a three-hour long live adventure "GoGame" in downtown San Jose.

3. Interactive Content: What "content" there is beyond the social experiences is largely interactive. This morning, for example, the entire group did a three hour workshop at the Stanford d. School that introduced participants to some of the concepts and design processes used by IDEO to help the worlds biggest companies innovate. The experience was all about interacting with other people, rather than passively listening to an expert yammer on.

4. Horizontal Learning: Most "education" is structured vertically, in which at any given moment, there is a difference between teacher and student. This weekend is much more about horizontal learning, in which the community presumes all other members are equals, and people move effortlessly and regularly in and out of the role of teacher and the role of student. The leaders of the few workshops there are at the event are spending the entire weekend with the rest of the attendees.

Photo credit: Nathaniel Whittemore