Word.ws English Dictionary

unconference

unconference noun: a conference that attempts to avoid the traditional drawbacks of conferences, such as high entry fees, excessive formality, and bias due to sponsors.

Noun

unconference (plural unconferences)

  1. (informal) A conference that attempts to avoid the traditional drawbacks of conferences, such as high entry fees, excessive formality, and bias due to sponsors.
    • Think of the Kalamazoo unconference, assuming that the official videotape tells it like it was.1973, Texas A&M University Dept of English, CEA Critic
    • As a marketer, the unconference tells me more about what's hot in the marketplace than any other tool I have.2008, Shel Holtz, John C Havens, Lynne D Johnson, Tactical Transparency

Examples of unconference in a sentence

  • But the fact that there were predetermined sessions went against the whole "unconference" idea, a few attendees said.2008 October 20, Kim Hart, “Twittering Types Share Ideas Offline”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN:
  • Unconferences differ from conferences in the way they are organized and the way in which participation takes place.2011, Marjorie J. Porter, Sigrid E. Kelsey, editors, Best Practices for Corporate Libraries, Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 101:

Forms of unconference

pluralunconferences

Origin of unconference

From un- + conference.

Questions about unconference

What does unconference mean?
Unconference means a conference that attempts to avoid the traditional drawbacks of conferences, such as high entry fees, excessive formality, and bias due to sponsors.
How do you use unconference in a sentence?
But the fact that there were predetermined sessions went against the whole "unconference" idea, a few attendees said.
What part of speech is unconference?
Unconference is a noun.
What is the plural of unconference?
The plural of unconference is unconferences.

Words near unconference in the dictionary

  1. unconducted
  2. unconductive
  3. unconess
  4. unconfected
  5. unconfederated
  6. unconference
  7. unconferences
  8. unconferred
  9. unconfess
  10. unconfessable
  11. unconfessed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unconference (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “unconference.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unconference. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.