FUDCon (insert name of city here) Barcamp

[Dennis Gilmore]

On Wednesday, May 26, 2010 08:13:39 am Paul W. Frields wrote:
> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 07:38:49PM -0400, Steven M. Parrish wrote:
> > During the events FAD in Raleigh it was discussed that the next NA FUDCon
> > should be 4 days long, up from the current 3.  1 1/2 to 2 days  for
> > Barcamp with the balance to hackfests.
> > 
> > I've been thinking about the barcamps and how much time it takes out of
> > the 1st day.  What I am thinking is this.  For the next NA FUDCon we
> > solicit proposals in advance.  Proposals can be written in the wiki or
> > the prefered method would be a video proposal.  All talks proposed
> > atleast X number of days in advance would be voted on by the registered
> > attendees before arriving at FUDCon and will comprise the talks
> > scheduled for day 1.
> > 
> > After the FPLs opening remarks we can have people make proposals for day
> > 2 talks.  We can then put up the normal grid and have people vote on the
> > talks throughout the day and announce the following days schedule that
> > evening. This will eliminate the hour or so voting and getting
> > everything organized that morning.
> > 
> > Also since I believe day 1 would be a Friday I would suggest that the
> > user tracks be scheduled for day 2.  That would allow locals who have to
> > work on Friday to attend those sessions on Saturday.
> > 
> > Comments?
> 
> Greg DeKoenigsberg said that he didn't believe we were doing a real
> BarCamp any more.  Pre-screening and scheduling talks, for example,
> isn't a BarCamp.  His point was (IIRC) that the speakers needed to be
> jointly responsible for creating/fixing the schedule, rather than
> having a small group of people doing it.  Unfortunately, as our number
> of speakers has grown it's become increasingly difficult to do that.
> In RDU, for example, we probably had something like 25 or 30 speakers.
> In Toronto, it was closer to 55.  At the next FUDCon, if we end up in
> Tempe near ASU, chances are we'll have a pretty sizable bunch of
> students and LUG folks in attendance, and I'm predicting *at least* as
> many people in total as in Toronto, which was over 200.
> 
> On top of that, one of the most consistent comments people heard and
> which was reflected in the survey was that there was too much good
> content going at once.  In a way that's a compliment, but in a
> practical sense we need to make very good use of the time spent at
> FUDCon face to face.  Providing so much content at once, jammed into
> one day where people can't attend half of what they want or need to,
> makes FUDCon less effective.
> 
> Finally, we had a problem with getting people to the event on time, so
> we were delayed in our day of talks.  We can prevent that problem with
> better planning and advance notice to attendees.
> 
> At the Events FAD this past winter most people agreed on three things:
> 
> 1. We *really* need to consider a four-day FUDCon in North America.
> 
> 2. Each day should have fewer active rooms (sessions) at a time.
> 
> 3. We need better information for attendees, such as a welcome packet
>    for people at the hotel.

you forgot step 4.  we really should have a simple breakfast onsite (i.e. 
coffee and bagels/muffins) to encourage people to be there on time.  if people 
are eating and drinking coffee offsite they are more likely to be late.

Dennis
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