How OFU Works

Everything you need to know before, during and after the Online Facilitation Unconference.

1. Start here

If you registered late and missed every email, this section is enough. Five minutes and you’re comp.

OFU in four points

1. There is no program until you make one. OFU is an unconference. Nobody has planned the sessions in advance. The people who show up propose the sessions, and the schedule fills in live. If you want a conversation to happen, propose it — that is not a special role, it is how the event works.

2. It runs in blocks, not all day. There will be up to four blocks across November 5–7, each timed so that somewhere in the world it is a civilized hour. Each block is about three hours, with an optional couple more for whoever is still going. You are not expected to attend all of them, or all of any one of them. Most people attend one block and sneak into parts of another.

3. Moving between sessions is encouraged. If you are in a session and you are not learning or contributing, go somewhere else. This is a real rule, not a polite fiction. It is what keeps the rooms full of people who chose to be there.

4. Everything happens through the portal. One place to see the schedule, propose a session, RSVP, and find the link to whatever room you are heading to. [PORTAL LINK]

When it starts: come to the opening plenary at the start of your block. Link is in the portal and in your reminder email. Everything else is explained there, live.

The rest of this page is detail. Read it if you want to; you will be fine without it.

2. What an unconference actually is

At a conference, someone decides months ahead what will be discussed, selects speakers, and publishes a program. You choose from what they chose.

At an unconference, that step is skipped. The people in the room propose the sessions on the day, and the schedule assembles itself in front of everyone. The organizers hold the structure — the times, the rooms, the rules — and nothing else. What actually gets discussed is up to you.

This sounds chaotic and is not. It has been the standard format for this kind of gathering for more than twenty-five years, largely because it turns out that a room of practitioners knows better than any program committee what that room needs to talk about today.

What this asks of you

Slightly more than a conference does, and it is worth being honest about that.

• Show up with something. A question, a problem you are stuck on, a thing you have figured out that others might want. Not a presentation — a starting point.
• Choose actively. Nobody curates your day for you. You will have to pick between good options, and sometimes you will pick wrong. That is fine, see section 6.
• Contribute somewhere. Host a session, take notes in someone else’s, greet newcomers, or just be the person who asks a good question. More passive attendance is allowed, of course, but it is a thinner experience.

3. Four principles and one law

Unconferences are derived from Open Space Technology, a format developed by Harrison Owen in the mid-1980s. It comes with four principles and one law, read out at the start of Open Space events ever since. They are hints rather than rules — nobody enforces them, and nothing goes wrong if you ignore them. They describe how this kind of gathering behaves when you let it.

• Whoever comes is the right people
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
• When it’s over it’s over

The Law of Two Feet — also called the Law of Mobility — holds that you are the only person who can tell whether you are learning and contributing as much as you can. If you find yourself somewhere you are doing neither, use your two feet, or whatever you use to get around, and go somewhere you can.

Source: openspaceworld.org/wp2/what-is/. The third principle is a later addition, so you will see the set counted as four or as five depending on who is reading it out.

What they mean here

That is the canonical wording, and it is worth hearing as written. Here is how each one tends to play out at an online unconference specifically.

The Law of Two Feet is the one that changes behavior, and it is the one people find hardest online, where leaving a room feels more visible than slipping out of a doorway. Section 6.1 is about making that easy.

4. Blocks, and which one is yours

OFU runs online with participants in every time zone. There is no window that works for the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific at the same time — so instead of pretending otherwise, we run separate blocks, each positioned to bring two of the three regions together at a reasonable hour. The following dates and times are a likely scenario, but details are still to be confirmed.

The portal shows all of this in your local time. Do not do the arithmetic yourself; there is a daylight saving trap in here that catches everyone — the US has left daylight saving by these dates, Europe has too, and Australia has not.

Which should you attend?

Whichever is at a civilized hour where you are. Most people attend one block. You are welcome to attend more, and some people do — the blocks are 16 hours apart specifically so that this is possible without staying up all night.

Blocks are not repeats of each other. Each one has different people in it, proposing different sessions. And because each block is seeded by what came out of the one before, the later blocks tend to go deeper on whatever the event turns out to be about this year.

5. How a block runs

Every block has the same shape, and everything runs on the hour, so you always know when the next thing starts.

That is less than six hours, but if that is more than you can commit to, feel free to join where you can. After the handoff, extra rounds run for as long as there is appetite — up to two more hours. That is decided on the day, so do not plan around it, and do not feel you are leaving early if you leave at the handoff. You are leaving on time.

The plenary

Try not to skip it. It is where the schedule gets made. If you arrive after it just means you will find a program that other people built (though you can still add sessions after the fact).

Introductions happen in parallel — chat, a shared map, a pinboard — rather than everyone taking a turn at the microphone. It takes fifteen minutes for several hundred people and you will actually be able to find the ones you want to talk to afterwards.

Then the marketplace. Anyone who wants to propose a session raises a hand, comes on for about thirty seconds, and says what it is. A show of hands tells everyone roughly how many people are interested. The host places it on the grid. Repeat until the proposals run out.

You do not have to decide in advance whether you will propose something. Plenty of people decide during the marketplace, after hearing what others are interested in.

For the second and third blocks, the grid may not be empty when the plenary starts — it’s possible that it already has sessions on it, proposed by people in the block before. The marketplace adds to that rather than starting from nothing.

The lounge

Open the entire time. Go there between sessions, or instead of a session, or when a session finishes early. It is not a waiting room — the hallway conversation is a real part of the event and this is where it lives.

It also has a light schedule of its own:

• Named open tables. Just conversation. This is the hallway.
• The harvest table. Staffed the whole block. Hosts drop by when their session ends and give their two lines to a person rather than a form. Anyone can sit and listen.
• Lightning talks. Two minutes each, at an announced time. The lowest-stakes way to say something to a room.
• The demo table. Short tool demonstrations at announced times. Clearly labeled, opt-in, and never running opposite a participant session.

The breaks are when the lounge is fullest. Every session ends at the same time before a break, so everyone arrives at once. If you only visit the lounge twice, make it then.

Sessions may start at different times

We’ll offer different session lengths (e.g., 30, 45, and 60 minutes), so not every session will start exactly on the hour. They all finish together, though, so the break still works.

6. Attending sessions

6.1 The law of two feet

If you are in a session and you are neither learning nor contributing, leave and go somewhere you can do one or the other.

This is the Law from section 3, and it is not a euphemism. Walking out mid-session is expected behavior at OFU. Nobody will take it personally, because everyone is doing it, and because a session that people stayed in by choice is a much better session than one people sat through out of politeness.

Online it takes a little more nerve, because leaving a video call is more visible than slipping out of a doorway. Two things make it easier: you do not owe anyone an explanation, and you do not have to say goodbye. Close the tab and go.

If you are hosting and people leave: that is information, not a verdict. Sometimes it means the session is not what they expected. Sometimes it means you have the right eight people instead of the wrong twenty.

6.2 RSVPs

RSVP to sessions you intend to join. Two reasons, both practical:

• The host can see whether they are expecting six people or thirty, which changes how they run it.
• If a session moves or the host has to drop, you get notified. Without an RSVP, you find out by arriving at an empty room.

An RSVP is not a commitment. You can RSVP to a session and then go to a different one. Nobody is checking. The law of two feet applies before the session as well as during it.

6.3 Rooms and tools

OFU is a bring-your-own-tool event. Session hosts run their sessions wherever they like — Zoom, Meet, Teams, Butter, a shared whiteboard, whatever suits the conversation. The portal holds the link; the host holds the room.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• Check the link before the session starts. Some tools need an app, some do not. The portal notes which tool each session uses.
• Sessions can run over. The grid says 45 minutes, but if a conversation is going well and the host wants to keep going, nothing stops them. Stay if you want to; leave if you have somewhere to be. Both are fine.

7. Proposing and hosting a session

7.1 Deciding what to propose

Good OFU sessions tend to be one of four things:

Phrase it as a question if you can. A question invites people in; a statement reads as a talk.

What tends not to work: a polished presentation with slides. People came to talk to each other. A twenty-minute talk followed by ten minutes of questions is the format everyone came here to get away from.

7.2 Session lengths

Several options on the main grid, for example:

Notice that the suggested run time is shorter than the slot. That gap is not wasted — it is bio breaks, finding the next room, and the two minutes of good conversation that happen after a session ends. Please do use it. Running right to the edge means your participants arrive late to everything after you.

If you want to say something short, the main grid is not the place — a fifteen-minute idea in a forty-five-minute room is uncomfortable for everyone. Take a lightning talk slot in the lounge instead. Two minutes, no preparation, and a much easier first outing than hosting.

7.3 How to propose

Two ways, and both end up in the same place.

1. In the plenary. Raise a hand, come on for thirty seconds, say what it is. A show of hands gives everyone a sense of the interest, and the host puts it on the grid.
2. In the portal, any time. Once the grid is open you can post directly, including during a session, during a break, or after your block has ended.

You can post a session to a later block. If a conversation in the first block clearly needs another hour, put it in the next one — different people will be there, which is often the point. We do encourage you to focus on the block you are in, but posting ahead is entirely legitimate, and it is how the event builds on itself.

7.4 What we ask of hosts

Short list. All of it is small.

7.5 How many sessions should you host?

There is no limit, and we are not going to impose one — you are better placed than we are to judge what you can handle.

But a rough shape that works well:

If you host three sessions and attend none, you have had a very different event from the one on offer. The portal will show you your own load as you schedule, so you can see the shape of your day before you commit to it.

One thing the portal will not let you do is schedule yourself into two sessions at the same time. That one is physics rather than policy.

8. Volunteer roles

Sessions are not the only way to contribute, and some of these are more useful than hosting. All of them are visible in the portal — sign up for whatever fits the gaps in your day, and you can see where the gaps are.

Lounge host is the least glamorous and the most valuable. A break with someone actively making introductions is the difference between a hallway and a corridor.

Signing up as a notetaker is also, quietly, the easiest way to make yourself attend a session you were on the fence about.

9. What gets captured, and what does not

9.1 The default is not recorded

Sessions are not recorded unless the host chooses to record. Some conversations only happen unrecorded, and we would rather have those conversations.

Where a host has opted in, you will see it on the grid before you RSVP. You can choose a session partly on that basis, and you can ask a host to turn it off. That is a reasonable thing to ask and hosts are asked to honor it.

The same applies to being seen. The grid shows how many people have RSVP’d to a session and a few of their faces, because “some people I recognize are going to this one” is genuinely useful information. If you would rather your attendance not be visible — and there are good reasons, a session on burnout or a difficult client being the obvious ones — there is a single setting that turns it off for everything.

9.2 What gets shared

On the automatic drafts: where there is enough material, the portal drafts a fuller write-up and sends it to the host to check. Hosts get [one to two hours] to approve, edit, or annotate it. If that window passes, the draft still publishes but is clearly labeled as not yet reviewed, with the raw material attached. We would rather publish something honest and unfinished than nothing.

9.3 The between-block digest

A few hours after each block closes, a digest goes out: what was discussed, by whom, and what came of it. It fills in as hosts approve their write-ups, so it is worth coming back to.

It is also the best reason to attend a later block. Proposals for the next block open the moment the previous one ends, so if you read something in the digest that you want to pick up, put it on the grid.

This is not an OFU invention. Publishing the collected record of every session before people disperse is forty-year-old Open Space practice, and speed is the point — momentum fades fast.

10. The portal

One place for everything. [PORTAL LINK]

• See the full grid for every block, in your local time
• Post a session, edit it, move it, or cancel it — yourself, at any time
• RSVP to sessions, and get notified if one you RSVP’d to moves
• Find the room link for wherever you are heading next
• Sign up for a volunteer role
• Submit your two lines after hosting
• Read the digest and the archive

You are in charge of your own sessions. There is no organizer standing between you and the schedule. If you need to move a session, move it — everyone who RSVP’d gets told automatically.

The portal will occasionally tell you things like “this round is full but the next one has space” or “there is a similar session at the same time — want to talk to that host?” These are observations, not restrictions. Do what you think is right; you know your situation better than the software does.

It works on a phone, which matters more than it sounds: most of what you will actually do on the day — find the next room, RSVP, propose something, submit your two lines — happens between other things, not sitting at a desk.

11. Quick answers