For the past year or so, I have heard talk of an “unconference.” My response was usually the same: “What the hell is an unconference?” It seemed counter-intuitive. A bunch of people getting together, with a couple standing up and staying “I want to talk about blah.”

An agenda is then created, and sessions are presented much in the same way that a normal conference is run. Unconferences tend to be free or very, very cheap, and, usually, seem to be rather technical.

The first ones were called BarCamps (I believe), which reminds me of PubCon, which was started by some Search Engine Marketers that couldnt afford to go to the main search engine marketing show (Search Engine Strategies) in London, so met in a pub next to the conference hotel.

PubCon has now grown into a huge conference run by Brett Tabke of WebMasterWorld, so I suppose its not really an unconference anymore.

Why does all this matter?

Unconferences are no longer the counter culture of trade conferences. They happen everywhere and all the time. Even BlogHer had a unconference (where men could actually speak!).

It seems that people have realized that real power of conferences are the people, and by stripping away agendas and exhibit halls and $1000 entry fees, people are getting that access.

Today, I sit at id345′s coworking space (yes coworking still sucks), listening to people talk about iphone application development. I am blogging because 99.9% of the words uttered by these brilliant folks are passing right over my head (I understand: iphone, iphone app, business development, monetization and starbucks).

Some of the top names in Mac and iPhone development, like Bret Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire, Erica Sudan of TUAW, and Bill Dudney, who wrote several books on OS X development have swung by. I would have never met either of them if this was a traditional conference. (Even more impressive was Bill’s son, who has an iPhone app developed and on the way to the app store. I believe he is 10 years old.)

At the same time, there are iPhone Dev Camps going on in San Francisco, India, Austin, Portland, Chicago, London, Paris and Seattle. There is a ton of cross communication with Adobe (one of the sponsors) video collaboration products. Cost to the attendees? Zero.

On August 16th, I will be attending WordCamp. A unconference taking place in San Francisco and centered around WordPress has around 200 attendees registered. The agenda? Unknown. The people? Fantastic.

Repeat after me: Its the people. Its the people. Its the people.

What is Web 2.0? Its the people.

What is the social web? Its the people.

What the hell is an unconference? Its the people.

‘Nuff said.

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