Unassuming Unconferences
Here’s a great example of user-driven content coming from inside the dynamic world of business media: Zucchini Dinners provides an intimate setting for media executives to sit directly with 10 key executives. They create their own content, and drive their own discussions. This is an invitation-only event–I just stumbled on this site, so I don’t think you’re even supposed to know about this.
Another great concept is Lunch 2.0 which started in Silicon Valley and has recently come to New York. Nerds gather for lunch, and nerd-seeking organizations play host–what could be more perfect?
What do these events have in common? Purposely weak central-organizing structure (disintermediation) and food (integration). Why does food count as integration? Because you have to eat, and these events leverage that unavoidable fact.
This is not disintermediation. This is a self-organizing system similar to a cocktail party or salon. Meetings by definition have different forms of structure,,,including self organizing structures. In terms of “meeting lore” this is a meeting with a structure. It has a time, a place and a format. The “format” is content generated by participants as they “meet”. By definition then, this is a “user generate content meeting”.