A discontent, also called a Non-Congress or OpenSpace conference, is a conference in which participants and attendees themselves take a more participative and active role. The term has been applied, in whole or in part, to a wide range of types of meetings in which attempts are made to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as long-term talks, disproportionate or commercial presentations. For example, in 2006, CNNMoney described various events that included, among others, BarCamp, Bloggercon and Mashup Camp. The term is mainly used in technological communities or interested in innovation.
History In the book Open Space Technology (1997), Harrison Owen spoke of many of the techniques that we now associate with the current concept of desconference, although in the book that word is never used. The first occurrence of the term misconference was in the announcement of the annual XML developer conference of 1998. In more recent times, the term has been used by Lenn Pryor to speak of BloggerCon in a 2004 paper. The FooCamp 2003 spread a special type of discontent in which "There is no program ... until the attendees make one." For more informationwiki
