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Not more that a few hours after ASAE leaders pulled the plug on the official ASAE Tech Expo due to the big blizzard in DC, social media leaders and conference evangelists created UNTECH10, an unconference alternative (FREE) to everyone.

The Background

A lot of snow in DC… I mean a lot! ASAE cancels Tech Expo 2010. Then conference go’er Aaron Biddar from The Port Network contacted Lindy Dryer at SocialFish (one of our Engage365.org community leaders) about using their hotel space for an on-site rally. It didn’t take long for the unconference idea to surface. The call came while Lindy was having lunch with Omnipress’ Tony Veroeven and the two of them discussed it with Socialfish Maddie Grant (who can’t say no to anything involving social media). It was at that point the UnTech10 Unconference was born.

How to Create an Unconference in 24 Hours

Maddie Grant and a small team of ASAE Tech Expo exhibitors and other meeting industry leaders have been meeting on and off to determine the best on-site approach for those who were going to attend the ASAE event as well as a way to take the unofficial event virtual. It was decided to have a mix of on-site sessions and virtual sessions (streaming content) to anyone who is interested with the focus still on Association and Event Technology.

The team quickly launched an eventbrite registration page to get an idea of how many people may attend (at the time of this blog it was 93). They also chose Omnipress’ Conference 2.0™ solution to be the conference hub for networking, schedules and conversations while other providers like Peach New Media, NFi Solutions and The Port provided web casting and video support. All of which has been updated in the unconference wiki.

The team then used social outposts (e.g., Twitter) and created a hashtag for the event to share event information — #untech10. This combined with traditional marketing efforts from many industry suppliers has helped spread the word to their followers.

Watch a Canceled Conference go Unconference and Learn

1.  Follow #untech10 on Twitter

2.  Join the UNTECH10 Conference™ 2.0 event community

Social Media and Meeting Planning at it’s Best

If these is something to learn here, it’s to be prepared.

1. know a good meeting planner
2. know some really good, experienced social media leaders who can lead and rally the social media world
3. realize the power of relationships and “just ask”
4. take care of your suppliers and they will take care of you
5. have an event community in place