I have to admit that the idea of an “unconference” made me a little uncomfortable. No set agenda? No prepared presentations? No experts? What was there to prevent the entire thing from dissolving into chit chat about the best Woot items and JLo’s babies? The answer, I discovered, is a good-sized group of smart, thoughtful people with a variety of experience, who are willing to share new projects, discuss best practices, and admit to not knowing all of the answers.

So what did those smart people say? Here are 5 insights--one per session.

Session One: Online Communities for Social Change
This session started my conference with macro questions: how do people negotiate identities online, and how do these on- and off-line identities influence online activism? (It made me think a lot about Danah Boyd’s article on Friendster and negotiating complex identities in an online space that wants to flatten people into profiles.)

Also, when we’re building campaigns should we seek to aggregate activist campaigns into one central place (“I care about the environment and human rights and Darfur--and want one place where I can go for updates/action” or “We are building a Progressive Movement”) or should we continue to build separate online communities for each cause (“I care about the environment, but I’m a Republican and don’t want to be bombarded by leftist propaganda” or “we need a diverse group of supporters to pass this legislation”)? Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and every campaign requires different tactics.

Session Two: OpenID
This session was more traditional, with an expert and lots of questions. I have to admit it was my first time learning about OpenID and I spent a fair amount of the session searching for terms on wikipedia (RSA, SAML, etc.). My biggest take-away was the idea of switching from a Customer-Relationship Management (CRM) model to a Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) model where the user is the center.

For example--I move across the county and want to change my address universally. The current system makes me do all the work, changing my address with any number of companies. With VRM, I put the data out once, and enterprises I have relationships/accounts with can choose to pull this data in. In the future, users might broadcast their desires to companies, to be marketed to (“do you notice how much paper I’m buying? sell me paper at a lower cost!”). Read more about all of this at projectvrm.org.

Session Three: Social Shopping
In his amazing book, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, Paco Underhill reveals that the more time you spend in a store, the more you spend. And how do you get people to spend more time in a store? By making it a social experience--preferably with two women shopping together. (For more insights on the gendered dynamics of shopping, you should immediately buy this book with your Amazon Prime.) So how does this translate to the online world? Customer reviews, affiliate programs, facebook apps, and more. But, this was a moment when an expert would have been really handy. Who has data on the actual value of reviews? Do they really sell more things? Our consensus was that they must since Amazon pushes you so hard to review your purchases, but... maybe you know?

Session Four: Mobile Communities
After we went over the reasons why mobile technology is so mediocre in the US (no standardization, multiple platforms and providers, no widespread access to high-speed connections, carriers with veto power over content), this was a session for dreaming of what mobile could be. For instance, it could take advantage of all of the properties that make mobile unique: geographic data, voice access, and the sheer number of mobile devices: Travel services could hook you up with instant recommendations of places to visit, along with audio tours of them. Social networks could let you know if any of your friends were nearby. Billboards could be interactive... it’s all so amazing. In the meantime, we’ll have to content ourselves with this cool audio blogging site: http://www.utterz.com/

Session Five: Identify, Engage, Recognize
It was a long day, so thank goodness that the last session of the day was so amazing. Sean O’Driscoll gave a great presentation of Microsoft’s MVP program--how they find, recognize and reward their users. Something that struck me was his idea that there are three groups of people: “I like you” (satisfaction level) is 90% of your base, “I love you” (loyalty level) is 9% of your base, “I defend you” (affinity level) is 1% of your base.

So at Microsoft, he asked “what are the drivers that move people between these levels?” One of the answers that came back was that co-creation is one of the main drivers. The more people were engaged in the process of development, the more tied the felt to the outcome. I can think of, oh, about a million applications for this idea.

Phew! I really did try to limit it to one idea from each session, and there are still so many more things to talk about. Maybe I’ll host an unconference of my own. Maybe at my house. Maybe over dinner and wine. Maybe I’ll call it a dinner party. Who’s in?