Podcamp is coming to Connecticut! What’s a podcamp? Well, it’s an unconference and you can look up podcamps and unconferences on Google or Wikipedia.

A better way to understand a podcamp is to experience one, so coming to Podcamp CT may be the best way to understand them, or visiting Podcamp Boston shortly before Podcamp CT would be a good experience.

As a writer, however, I like to explore metaphors and on the podcamp planning list, Joe Cascio provided a great metaphor. Podcamp is like s pot luck conference. Everyone brings something to share. I might add a little bit of Forrest Gump to that and suggest that many people bring boxes of chocolates and you never know what you’ll get inside. I think another useful metaphor is a giant brainstorming session.

People have often wondered how many future Einsteins are languishing undiscovered in some underperforming school. How many great ideas are lost to the world because students aren’t given an opportunity to reach their potential as future Einsteins. Unconferences are a chance for undiscovered great minds to shine forth.

I think Dan Gillmor captures another aspect of this. Dan is a noted journalist who has often commented about his audience knowing more about the subject matter he is writing about than he does. He talks about the importance of journalists listening to their audiences. Unconferences are a great opportunity to listen to the audience.

For me, conferences provide another great example of great minds being untapped. How often have you been to a conference where you sit in the audience listening to four experts on a panel and think, I know more about this topic than they do? Often the experts are chosen not because of their expertise, but because they are well known personalities. I’ve often listened during the last ten minutes of a panel when a real expert gets up to offer fresh ideas in what I call conference jeopardy.

Conference jeopardy is a common game. The panel speaks for forty minutes and it is followed by a ten minute period of question and answers. The real experts who have been sitting in the audience must now find some way of sharing an important insight in the form of a question. They questions often have the greatest insight. Unconferences focus on these questions instead of on the long winded presentations by peoples whose real expertise is being a noted personality.

Unconferences change all of this. At an unconference, everyone is a rockstar. Everyone is expected to share their ideas. What is really great about this is when the brainstorming takes place. Groups are often much more than the sum of all their parts and unconferences are a great example of this. When one person shares a thought it can spawn new unexplored thoughts in others, and these newly emerged thoughts can be the real valuable chocolates from Joe’s pot luck.

A final thought about unconferences for right now: Good unconferences provide an opportunity to pull together some of the best emergent thoughts of the unconference as everyone asks, where do we go from here. Typically, they take the best ideas back into their daily lives and look forward to another pot luck brainstorming session. One podcamp begets another just as the plans for Podcamp CT started forming at Podcamp Western Mass.

The Podcamp CT planning energy also quickly became mashed up with the planning for Social Web Week CT. Social Web Week CT, which seeks “to bring people together in CT to explore how best to use the social web to improve our quality of life”, will include some traditional panels as well as some great events which will be much closer to unconference format. There should be a little bit of something for everyone, and I encourage traditional conference goers to experiment a little bit and try some unconference fare. It will be another great lead up to Podcamp CT. Will you be there?