Blogger and wiki aficionado Anne Gentle just invited me to participate in an “unconference” to be held in conjunction with the upcoming DocTrain West conference in Vancouver.

Of course I was delighted to be asked, but had no idea what an “unconference” was. The first place that a google search pointed me was the flagship of all wikis, Wikepedia. Annoyingly the Wikipedia page while citing numerous examples didn’t actually include a definition.

But it did link me to the “Unconference Blog” and according to them an “unconference” is a facilitated participant-driven face-to-face conference around a theme or purpose.

I like the sound of that. What also made participating in Anne’s suggested unconference even more attractive was that the proposed schedule said it would run to about “beer-thirty,” which sounds like my sort of time.

Naturally Ann has set up a wiki about the event and you can find out more, or sign up to attend, there.

I’ll be contributing a session titled Publishing is no longer the last step.. If you are attending DocTrain I’d love to see you there.

At the main conference I’ll also be presenting a session on Wikis Are Wonderful, or Are They? A Real World Story of Using Wikis For User Information.

Oh and that wikipedia page – it now has the basic definition added – guess who did that?