The idea of a Liquid Unconference, is that it is fundamentally scalable. It is possible to self-organise an event at any venue - yourself. You can take part at home, in a cafe, a bar, or a local community centre. It can be with 2 people, a group of friends, or you can even take part alone online. You can take part live or drop into the conversations later. On the other hand this vision of the ease of participation, does not preclude large scale highly produced events, which we may associate more commonly with conferences of theatre performances. Several hundred people can be accommodated into a live Unconference, which takes place over one day or more. Speakers and performers can be involved in which they contribute provocations, or ideas to the debate. A parallel fictional narrative can be involved along the lines of those discussed / hinted at on this list earlier (Forests / Gnomes - more on this later). Liquid Unconference as Game In particular I think we can develop some of the ideas proposed, in terms of user interface and community engagement, by superimposing the notion of play on these events - the events, and participation in them are part of the creation of an online and real-space game, of which all players are members and owners. In this context LD - is a fundamental part of the game-play, and the design of the game, the visual metaphors, the "script", the 3D spaces, and all the small practical details that are involved in taking the project forwards - these details are the game play. It is only this through this bold step that we can make the real space activity of taking part, the online decisions and the activity of designing the software and interfaces - concrete. The Unconferences debate and decide, LD is used as formal game-play-logic, the players own and decide on the development of the game. Boot Strapping and the power of Live LD systems show their true value with larger, and distributed communities. Getting a few fragmented users here and there - makes it difficult to realise the real benefit of debate, consequently those attracted are advocates, passionate - democracy nerds. This tends to steer the project into dangerous territory - and it is through the use of "live" debate, and the extension of the project into real-space and more creative and playful arenas that we will be able to build compelling democratic interfaces, that can involve a wide range of talents right from the word go. In this way the power of story, the ability to picture how LD can and should be used, the vision of future, the richness of human face-to-face interaction of local community, the emotional and structural distinctiveness of LD can all be told, and fed back into the design process - but we dont have to wait for the interfaces first. We can bootstrap and time the development of the narrative and game play, with the technical development of the software so that both complement each other. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Votorola" group. To post to this group, send an email to votorola@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to votorola+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/votorola?hl=en-GB.