More ideas follow…. but this was something that already came to my mind in Karlsruhe.

Anyway, here you find some practical tips how to host an unconference.

The concept might be clear for you but here are couple of links to the subject:

Wikipedia and unconference unconference

Business 2.0 Mag article, Why “unconferences” are fun conferences fun conferences

I fully agree with Owen, when he states: ‘no specators, only participants’, the problem however is that organizing every possible spectator into a contributing participant requires a lot of preparation. But since we are all students in the academic sense (study topics of interest, researchers in our own domains) we could end up with a seminar without straight content structured meetings. We are supposed to be serious hard-boiled scientists, but we all have our hobby’s, don’t we? (this, ofcourse, is followed by self-criticizing laughter)

So: let’s agree on some topics that structure our seminar (our half year ‘themes’). For instance: a morning session on ‘interfaces’ (with a few short readings that have been published here in advance, with a lot of -structured - discussion), an afternoon with demonstrations on topics that cover this theme. Next day: next theme with demos). And perhaps: a guest lecturer.
This is a serious breach with former seminars, where the topics were clear, but the ‘leading principles’ were left out because of the very practical reason that we have projects and lots of interesting things around our MA.

But this sounds much too structured, I’m afraid. But, then: it’s still called a ’seminar’. It only does not last a week…

Just some thoughts trying to accomplish the impossible…