This year, I’ve attended two small Open Space conferences, AONW and CITCON in Dallas. Both were incredibly valuable events. I learned a lot, I got to participate in some great conversations, and I met a variety of people with whom I’ve continued to connect.

(And some of those reconnections have been pleasantly serendipitous. While in Finland, I arrived about an hour early for one of my meetings. The only other person there was a fellow American. We started chatting and realized that we’d actually met before. In Dallas at CITCON. It’s a very, very small world, and getting smaller every day. But I digress.)

So anyway: there’s another, similar conference coming up October 22 - 23 here in the San Francisco Bay Area: the Agile Open California conference. Modeled after Agile Open Northwest, AOCA is another all-Open-Space-all-the-time-conference.

If you’ve experienced Open Space before, you know how cool it is. If you haven’t, you may not know how it works. In Open Space, the content is developed by the participants in the moment. It’s not your typical simultaneous-tracks-with-droning-speakers-and-death-by-PowerPoint conference. Instead, the content reflects what the participants want to talk about, now.

In traditional conferences, participant feedback inevitably includes comments like “The coffee breaks were the best part!” and “I found it incredibly valuable to be able to exchange ideas and experiences with my peers!” Open Space is like all-coffee-breaks-all-the-time, but with a lightweight organizing mechanism to make it easier to find the most relevant discussions for your current situation. The result is magic.

AOCA has an impressive participants list, and I’m sure the sessions and the conversations will be fascinating.

My friend Ainsley who has had a big hand in organizing AOCA tells me they still have places left. Frankly, I’m stunned that they aren’t sold out. I highly recommend you grab a space if you plan to be anywhere near SF at the end of October. Given my experiences at AONW and CITCON, I predict it will be among the best 2 days and $250 you’ve spent on conferences, ever.

(And in case you’re wondering - the only reason I’m not going is because I had a previous commitment that’s taking me out of the country - again. I’m really disappointed that I’m going to miss AOCA, but I can’t move my commitment. But because I think conferences like this are important, my company is a sponsor even though I can’t be there.)