The ways in which people gather and the guise in which the choose to meet are a couple of things that fascinate me. Recently (we are talking 12-18 months) there has been a surge of “un” events being held across the UK (mainly middle England) – whose facilitation has occurred through websites such as Twitter.

Who am I kidding, it’s just Twitter – Twitter is really good at creating the illusion of connectivity. We can manage many threads of text lead conversation and it can be pumped into multiple mobile devices, which allows us to tap in and tap out – perhaps choosing to join in, perhaps watching and observing what is going on. Until proper (read: thorough, timely and tested) research has been done, we can do nothing more than cleverly speculate who, if any one, actually reads and bothered with what we write. Again, it is an illusion of connectivity – and like most online interaction, it is difficult to bring about confirmed judgments about one’s identity until eventually meet face to face and reflect our judgments off another human being.

So, rise 2009, the year of the unevents – the guise of an event, with the supposed informality of those who just want to meet up and have a chat. If there is anything we can learn from unevents is that they really aren’t unevents – they are still events, but without the apparent, obvious structure that is required to make an event work and be successful in fulfilling its agenda. There are still people manically running around to get people to turn up, arrange the scotch eggs and generally host and greet invited speakers and businesses. But the general disposition is that we are there on our own accord to “make things happen.”

So in this case, what does the “un” mean? Who goes to “un” events? What influence would an unsociety actually have? – what does shedding the discourse of official and hierarchy actually do to people?

I do have some observations which emerge time and time again from sitting about quietly, listening to conversations and having moo cards thrust in my face. Firstly, there is a lot of capturing and “amplifying” going on – from the majority of the audience. I don’t dare get any piece of media/internet equipment out if there are more than 2 others in the room capturing the event on my behalf. Ending up in information that I would capture being kept on analogue format (read: paper and pen) and not being shared. From this capturing, you get people who are not in the room, commenting on what a useful unevent this is – and how awesome it is that it is being captured.

Only problem is, there is not enough content to go around, especially when the focus is on conversation (read: opinion) , not actual thought-out responses, supported by evidence/data/historical underpinning – almost certainly there are people who are in the room being excluded because they are unsure about this permanent capturing thing going on (or can’t get a signal #1stworldwoes), and most importantly, most of the people doing the capturing are having conversations, through the lens of their phones/cameras/laptops, with other people who are having conversations through their own lens of their phones/cameras/laptops – hence creating a construction of a narrative, which could be argued, doesn’t even exist (!)

In the same way that television creates a moving image, crafted from a range of different devices which help construct a meaning that their audience can understand, those who are creating content for the wider audience of the web (read: their twitter network) are constructing their very own media event where they get to be the star of the show. Yet another offshoot of identity performance… Goffman would be proud.

Now – back to the question “Why do unevents exist?” – it could be suggested that an event without context, an event without purpose beyond ‘aving a chat, is essentially creating opportunities for people to create their own responses – un-media for un-events, which may relate to their own desires to construct an interesting twitter identity. Layman’s terms: It gies ye something interesting tae talk aboot on teh interwebs. The buzz of feedback, the intrinsic desire to have somebody talk back to them during broadcast, is enough for an unevent audience member to become addicted the supposed amplification of an un-media un-event. Nothing interesting to amplify at home when you are doing the dishes or changing the cat litter.

So take your un-event, add some easy to digest content (nothing too taxing or you’ll be accused of being an academic), add some easy to use mobile devices that allow you to create content on the spot, a bit of english dis-ease (which allows for the mobile device to be used as a social prompt), film the whole thing for the Internet, add a hashtag (omg hashtag) – and what do you get?

A fantastic illusion of synchronous connectivity – without having to tap into emotions, the beauty of locations, the need to ask questions, the desire to hunt for knowledge, the complexities of human characters, the negative. Utopian visions are a wonderful thing. And if you can’t get a word in, create your own!