An unconference is a participant-driven gathering that tries to avoid one or more features of conventional conferences, such as top-down agendas, sponsored keynotes, or a strict separation between “speakers” and “audience.” The core idea is that the people who show up collectively create the content, typically by proposing sessions, shaping questions, and having conversations rather than lectures - wikipedia 
Unconference is a broad umbrella term, not a single method. Under that umbrella you’ll find many styles: BarCamp-style sessions, birds-of-a-feather discussions, peer-learning workshops, hallway-track-first gatherings, and formats that look a lot like Open Space Technology.
# Where the term comes from The word “unconference” is commonly associated with late-1990s / early-2000s tech and web culture, and became popular through event series like FooCamp and BarCamp, which emphasised participant-created content and informal peer exchange.
# What usually happens at an unconference A typical unconference has a theme (or loose domain), an opening where participants propose topics, and a schedule that emerges on the day. Sessions often look like small-group discussions, show-and-tell demos, skillshares, problem-solving circles, or “ask me anything” conversations, and the tone is usually more peer-to-peer than presenter-to-audience.
Many unconferences also adopt explicit note-taking or “proceedings” habits (one shared notes doc per session) to avoid the classic failure mode: great conversations that vanish into the air.
# How it differs from an Open Space event Open Space Technology (OST) is best understood as a specific, well-defined method that often sits inside the broader unconference family. In other words, many Open Space events are unconferences, but not all unconferences are Open Space.
Open Space tends to have a clearer “operating system” than unconference-as-a-general-label. Open Space usually starts with an empty agenda and creates a “marketplace” schedule on the day, but it also leans on explicit guiding principles and a single behavioural rule. The rule is famously the Law of Two Feet (also called the Law of Mobility): if you are not learning or contributing, move to another conversation. This makes movement normal and keeps sessions from becoming social traps.
Unconference formats may or may not include that explicit rule set. Some unconferences allow free movement implicitly, but others quietly drift back toward traditional conference dynamics (fixed sessions, passive audiences, speaker hierarchies) while still using the “unconference” brand. Open Space is harder to domesticate because its rules are part of the design - jcrete.org
# A simple mental model
Unconference is a category: participant-driven, agenda-from-the-room, conversation-first. - en.wikipedia.org
Open Space is a recipe: a particular way to reliably run that kind of gathering at many scales using a small set of principles and the Law of Two Feet. - en.wikipedia.org
# When to choose which Choose “unconference” as the frame when you want freedom to blend formats (talks, demos, workshops, salons) and you have a community that already knows how to self-organise without much structure. Choose Open Space when you want a high-trust, high-agency environment where self-organisation is the point, you expect lots of parallel conversations, and you want the culture of movement and responsibility to be explicit rather than implied.
# Common pitfalls
If organisers secretly want a predetermined outcome, unconference formats often collapse into performative participation: people can talk, but nothing can change. This is usually felt as cynicism and “we wasted a day.” - involve.org.uk
If note-taking and harvesting are not designed, unconferences can produce intense learning with no memory. The fix is simple: make session notes a first-class artifact and give every session a place to record what happened and what’s next.