Om loved watches, and the craftsmanship behind them (if you’ve never heard him talk about them, his Hodinkee podcast interview is a great place to start.) And OmFest was being created for what would have been his 60th birthday. Sixty seconds in a minute. Sixty minutes in an hour. Twelve hours around a clock face.

I kept coming back to those numbers, and to the idea of designing OmFest around one full turn of a twelve-hour clock (that’s also where the little line in our website footer came from: “twelve hours, wound by hand”).

From 9am to 9pm, we’d have twelve hours together. Instead of a traditional conference agenda, I thought about the day as a clock face divided into four movements, each with its own pace and energy, with loose edges rather than rigid three-hour blocks. 

The second challenge: some people would come for an hour; some would stay for all twelve. How could one hour feel complete, while twelve never ran out of things to do? That question shaped almost every programming decision we made.

The four movements

1. Discover: The morning was intentionally slow: coffee, breakfast, music, exhibits, the hidden OM/60 discoveries, and books from Om’s collection. We didn’t want anyone walking in feeling like they were late for something.

2. Learn: Instead of back-to-back talks, our Present Future sessions came in two concentrated blocks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The goal wasn’t to keep everyone seated. It was to give them something worth talking about afterward.

3. Connect: We built opportunities for connection throughout the day: a shared writing table, tea tastings, a connection wall, exhibits, and plenty of time with nothing scheduled at all. Sometimes the most valuable part of a program is what happens right after it ends.

4. Celebrate: By late afternoon, the energy shifted. Flash talks, cocktails, and a birthday toast brought everyone together, and the night became DesiParty, with DJ Rekha, dancing, dinner, and late-night Masala Maggi.

Designing for one hour or twelve?

To make an hour feel complete and twelve never feel long, we made a few deliberate choices:

• Create multiple entry points. Exhibits and experiences ran all day, so nobody needed to arrive at a specific time to participate.
• Make each programming block stand on its own. Nobody needed to attend the morning talks to understand the afternoon talks.
• Protect unstructured time. We left room for conversation instead of scheduling every minute.
• Design the transitions. Music, food, and lighting moved people from one part of the day to the next.
• Give the day somewhere to go. The evening celebration was a destination without making everything before it feel like a warm-up.

There wasn’t one correct way to experience OmFest. Some people might spend an hour over tea, while others would be drawn to the photographs, books, or writing table.

Where I’d start next time.

It’s tempting to start with the schedule: you have a venue for X hours, so you find X hours of things to put in it. I’d start with questions instead:

• How should someone feel when they arrive and when they leave?
• What can they experience if they only have an hour?
• What will keep someone interested if they stay all day?
• Where should the energy rise or fall?
• What happens when there’s nothing scheduled?

The clock gave us the structure. The people gave the day its meaning.

Post 8 of 60 · Making OmFest