FUDCON idea

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Rodrigo Padula
<rodrigopadula at projetofedora.org> wrote:
> On 17-07-2010 11:10, Bert Desmet wrote:

> I just got this idea, a lot of people are working on different open source
> projects, and want to host a hack session during fudcon about that.
> Maybe it would be a good idea to let those people present their (new?)
> project in 10 or 15 minutes (lightning talks) before the actual hack
> sessions start. that way the attendees will learn about new project, and it
> will be probably easier to get new people involved with smaller or new
> projects.
>
> What do you think about it?
>
For the past several North American FUDCons we've had "pitches" before
the hackfests similar to the barcamp pitches.  (ie: who you are, brief
description of what you'll hack on.)

I think that lightning talks would be a good addition but depending on
the number of separate hackfests, we might want to do both.

I was thinking of something like this (just my thought, feel free to
tear it apart :-)  use lightning talks to help interest people who are
thinking about attending hackfests but not sure, that they would like
it.  Do this by having three lightning talk sessions:

Day 1
barcamp opening (FPL or other organizer)
barcamp
  - pitches
  - voting
  - sessions
lightning talks
barcamp closing (FPL or other organizer)

Day 2
hackfest opening pitches
lightning talks
hackfest
lunch
(if ordering pizza/other food delivered) -- lightning talks

People go to fudpub

day 3
lightning talks
hackfest


lightning talks could be five minutes or ten minutes each.  30 minutes
to an hour seems like a good length for the lightning talk sessions.
Probably signup in advance.

Having them on the hackfest days has the following ramifications:
  - May encourage more people to come to the hackfests (ah, I'll go
see what the lightning talks are in the morning... Ooh that lightning
talk about transifex was neat and I'm already here so maybe I'll stay
and hack on it)
  - means, logistically, we'd need a room to hold everyone on the hackfest days.

Rodrigo mentioned that we were having a lightning talk session in
FUDCon Santiago just about the time this was sent :-)  One thing I
thought worked well was to have the count down projected on the rear
wall (side wall where both the speakers and audience could see it
might be even better).  A second thing that worked well was to have
the buzzer when time expired make everyone laugh a bit.  That way if
the speaker is going on and on, they leave the stage with people
laughing and clapping rather than a buzzer that reminds you of getting
a question wrong on a quiz show.

-Toshio