The Online Facilitation Unconference (OFU) is an annual online learning exchange on the art and practice of facilitating in virtual environments. We bring together facilitation practitioners from a wide variety of backgrounds to share, explore, learn, and make new connections among peers.
350+ people registered from 40+ countries!
We are excited to once again have the opportunity to play alongside and as part of IAF’s Facilitation Week.
A big thank you to our other partners:
This event wouldn’t be possible without the support of our amazing sponsors. Thank you!
At its core, OFU is an unconference, meaning the vast majority of the program will be created by the participants in real time based on everyone’s interests and needs. The unconference sessions will take place in the second half of the week (Thursday through Saturday, October 22–24).
To help everyone warm up a little, we will offer a handful of pre-scheduled “seed” sessions, which will take place earlier in the week (Monday through Wednesday, October 19–21).
New this year, we will offer a mix of sponsored sessions from our tech exhibitors. These may include demos, guided tours, cases studies, or conversations about where the industry is headed, though how a sponsor structures their session(s) in terms of duration and format is completely up to them. These sessions will also take place earlier in the week, and we encourage our participants to explore the tools further during the unconference and – where appropriate – possibly integrate them into their sessions.
With that in mind, here’s what’s on the agenda as of Saturday, September 19. All positions are subject to change. We’ll add and update more entries over the coming weeks.
A few opportunities to get in the spirit. More sessions and activities are being announced almost on a daily basis!
All details are still subject to change. Thank you for your understanding!
We’re offering a number of pre-scheduled tech demos and other warm-up sessions just to get everybody’s creative juices flowing.
A number of these sessions will be open to the general public, no registration for OFU20 required. Keep checking back for details!
Monday, October 19
Friday, October 23
Session planning starts Monday, October 19. Sessions start Thursday, October 22.
Below are the six recommended windows for hosting unconference sessions:
Thursday, October 22
Friday, October 23
Saturday, October 24
Of course, it’s OK to “color outside the lines” and schedule your sessions at different times during the week. We simply recommend these windows to make it easier for everyone to block time and also to maximize cross-continental collaboration.
OFU is a BYOT (bring your own technology) event, meaning the session hosts are in charge of choosing the tools and platforms that best fit their needs. In the past, this has worked out very well as it allows participants to experience, over the course of the event, a variety of new, improved, or otherwise interesting technology options in context.
While OFU doesn’t prescribe how to run the sessions, we do provide a central collaboration hub for attendees to introduce themselves, discuss topic ideas for the unconference, manage the schedule, and document outcomes. Registrants will receive their personal invite to this venue before OFU20 gets under way.
OFU events bring together facilitation practitioners from all over the world and from a rich diversity of backgrounds.
We ask registrants to tell us where they’re from (and/or where they currently live). As of October 9, we have 40+ countries represented:
As of September 25, here is how our registrants have self identified in terms of their professional role:
We ask registrants what’s on their mind in terms of “one burning question” regarding virtual facilitation. Here are a few of their answers: