Sid Lee’s Louis-Thomas Pelletier was among the session leaders yesterday as the inaugural Creative unConference—part of the One Club’s Creative Week—kicked off in New York.
In contrast to the predetermined speaker lists and agendas at traditional conferences, the unConference format encourages an informal, interactive experience by allowing attendees to set the schedule spontaneously.
The day began with attendees gathering in a room and introducing themselves to the group. Following the introductions, patrons were invited to propose discussion topics and post them on a board indicating the time and location. Attendees could then move from discussion to discussion as they desired.
Pelletier, co-creative director at Montreal’s Sid Lee, threw his hat into the ring early, leading a session that introduced Sid Lee’s “First Aid for the Brain” system, which is based on a deck of 46 cards that identifies common advertising techniques and offers suggestions on how to move past them into more creative territory.
“It’s a brainstorming tool that I developed to help the creative teams at Sid Lee come up with more and better ideas,” Pelletier explained after the session. “But it’s available to anyone who wants to buy it.
“It’s also a commercial tool for Sid Lee, to get people to talk about us.”
According to Pelletier, several of the more than 30 attendees of the session bought the First Aid deck for a price that covered the cost of their production.
While many of the sessions—which dealt with issues ranging from economic challenges to the use of social media—took the form of free-flowing discussions with participants seated in a circle around tables, Pelletier’s was a more conventional affair, with most of the hour taken up by his presentation.
“This is the first time for me with this type of conference, so I’m not sure how the other ones are going to be done,” he said.
Pelletier’s Sid Lee colleagues Jo-Ann Munro and Robert Gosselin were also uncertain of how the day would take shape, but said their early impressions were positive.
“I was skeptical at first,” said Munro, who attended a morning session about the challenges of introducing brands into the social media arena in an authentic way. “But I thought it was super. Everyone was sharing their experiences and best practices, and there was no competitiveness.”
One Club president Kevin Swanepoel said the unConference, which was facilitated by Vancouver-born Kaliya Hamlin of Unconference.net, was exceeding his own expectations in its early hours.
“This is the first unConference, and I’m surprised it’s going as well as it is,” said Swanepoel. “There is open communication, open dialogue, and it’s a meaningful exchange of information.”
The unConference wraps up early tomorrow afternoon, hours before the One Show Interactive awards close out Creative Week.
