Welcome to the National Council on Disability Unconference Wiki
The National Council on Disability is an independent federal agency committed to disability policy leadership. This unofficial website is devoted to helping all of us as citizens self-organize our Spring 2014 quarterly meeting in the San Francisco Bay area as an "unconference." Please help us make the meeting a success.
May 4-6, San Francisco Bay Area
NCD's quarterly meeting will be held Sunday through Tuesday, May 4 - 6, 2014. The meeting will be held at the Ed Roberts Campus in Oakland, a "universally designed, transit–oriented campus located at the Ashby BART Station in Berkeley, California." We've chosen to add a west coast flavor to the meeting, using the "unconference" as a way to encourage more community involvement, and to make the transfer of information less unidirectional than a traditional meeting. This community-editable wiki page is designed to help all of you help us create a successful meeting by self-organizing the conference and creating most of the sessions and conversations yourselves. We're shamelessly plagarizing a lot of the structure of the conference itself and the content of these pages from the O'Reilly Media "Foo Camp" conferences and the wiki pages that they have used to organize the very successful Sci Foo , Health Foo , and others.
Be Prepared to Demo or Speak
This conference will be as good as the participants make it. Be prepared to lead or participate in a session, ask interesting questions, show off what you're working on, and generally leave your mark. Like Burning Man, our goal is that there be no spectators, only participants (hopefully with less dust).
Unconference Sessions
We'll put most of the program together on Sunday evening at about 6:30 pm. That's your first chance to sign up to lead a session. We'll save some slots on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning for those who arrive late or get inspired as the event proceeds. We'll have small-to-large conference rooms for sessions with open areas to encourage dialogue between participants. While we've already been getting requests from various groups to be part of the agenda, note that as of right now there is no one with a pre-assigned slot (even for the Council Members who are organizing the conference!).
Ignite Ability!
In addition to the traditional public comment period, we've also scheduled an Ignite talk session for Monday evening. Ignite is "a geek event...[where] presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes." The motto of the series is "enlighten us, but make it quick." Please submit your own Ignite talks and encourage groups and individuals who want to engage the Council and our community to do the same.
Marketplace of Ideas
All day Monday, we'd like to offer interest groups and others with something to show and tell the public and the council the opportunity to provide information in the Atrium of the ERC. Please use the Marketplace of Ideas Page to add your group and request this opportunity.
Schedule, Sessions, and Activities
- Check out the proposed schedule.
- Boards (Schedule for Location and Content of Sessions) Online copy of the schedule boards . Please note that this is a test of how to best present tabular information to a screen reader. Your help would be appreciated.
- Sessions you'd like to present or attend
- Links and Notes from Sessions
- Nocturnal Activities - Ideas for fun after hours
Attendees
If you choose, please let us know that you are attending, and provide links to your projects, twitter handle, etc.
Making the Most of the Unconference Experience
- Blogging/Tweeting Guidelines
- We've never done this before, so we don't really know what to expect. You might be guided by these Tips from Seasoned Foo Campers.
Accessibility Plan
As you may note above, this type of conference is an experiment for NCD, and one that potentially raises many questions around accessibility. In the past, such questions have occasionally pointed toward not doing something as a solution to the difficulty in carrying it off and making it accessible. We're determined not to let that happen here, and we believe that an unconference experience is one that can be a very positive one for everyone, despite our various challenges. One of the challenges is budget, and with an acknowledgement of that constraint, we'd like to present some proposed solutions to the various accessibility issues that accompany trying to hold four or more simultaneous conversations on different disability issues. Please check out the NCD Unconference Accessibility Plan , and contribute if you find it lacking.
Latest activity
Looking forward to everyone's participation! Lynnae Ruttledge