Much of the time we spend in gatherings with other people disappoints us. “With the occasional exception, my mood in conferences usually swings between boredom, despair, and rage,” Duncan Green, a blogger and specialist in international development, confesses in the Guardian. Green’s take isn’t unique to conferences: The 2015 State of Enterprise Work survey found that “wasteful meetings” were employees’ top obstacle to getting work done.
-Priya Parker. “The Art of Gathering”
I have never before attended a forum where I could honestly say that not one minute of my time was wasted. You can’t afford to not be here.
-Declan Ganley, CEO of Rivada Networks, participant in the Antigua Forum
Call it a walking, grab-a-post-it-and-sharpie, roll-up-your-sleeves, flipped conference or unconference. The co-creation forum is purpose-driven and solution-oriented, and engages participants actively. It is a superior way to run a meeting as it leverages the expertise, knowledge and experience of everybody in the room, leaving no potential untapped.
It is based on the same principles that make free markets so effective: dispersed and tacit knowledge, a drive for creating value, free choice and the power of self-organization. The process transforms top-down managed meetings into constructive environments where co-creation and bottom-up collaborative problem resolution flourishes. In terms of Matt Ridley, the co-creation forum is a place where ideas can have sex.
Unlike the open space technology or what people usually call an unconference, the co-creation forum is built around an elaborate agenda with a specific purpose and it focuses the energy on how to achieve the previously defined desired outcomes of the event. Facilitation is an essential component of the process.
Though the agenda is determined, the format is highly dynamic and flexible, and able to sense and respond to challenges and opportunities as they arise during the event. The main ingredients of the secret sauce are the people, the process and the environment or setting. Key characteristics are a high level of energy, hard work and an astonishing amount of creation.
The main assets of this format are the following:
Fun, inclusiveness, feeling of safety, optimism, gratitude, feeling at home, soul mates, family, friends, creativity, wonder, hope, humility, learning, diversity, generosity, unexpected learnings are some of the words mentioned again and again during the closing rounds of the events.
Participants call the event productive and enjoyable, combustible, energising, exhausting, inspiring and enriching. One Antigua Forum participant shared “I feel like an iphone about to go out of battery, being updated with several applications and the operating system too.”