I’ve got a question for folks here. The definition of unconference I’ve used for a couple decades before getting involved in nostr is something similar to what we see the Wikipedia page. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference

When people arrive at the event they propose sessions and put them on post it notes and then there are many many rooms where discussions happen. There’s no schedule ahead of time, stage, presentations, or big screens. Sometimes there’s a mic and speaker that’s passed around if the groups get too large for every to hear. 

It’s something similar but much better organized than what we did the second day at Nostriga in the DIY space. 

To me there are things these open space style unconferences are good at, discussions, connections, networking, hashing out issues as a community, forming working groups on specific topics. They’re not great at informing where one person is trying to communicate a topic or project.  A talk on a stage can do a better job of that. 

I was expecting something more conversational where many people might have come to the event with topics of sessions they’d like to do, but there was no fixed schedule ahead of time. 

I’ve heard many people say nostr* is an unconference. So clearly this word has the meaning of an event like nostr* events. But from the communities I’m coming from what we’ve been having in Nostr are conferences with talks, panels, and workshops. And a bit of open spaces discussions. 

So my question is what is a conference if Nostriga was an unconference, what’s a conference? How is it different and what makes the one a conference and the other an unconference. 

To me, I’d like us to have closer to 50/50 time and space between speakers on stages conference and group discussions unconference. I get a lot out of the talks and panels and enjoy doing them. 

So. What’s a conference is Nostriga was an unconference?