Fudcon (worst) Experience

[tuxdna]

On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 5:06 PM, Chaitannya Mahatme <chaitannya at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Suchakra,
>
> I do agree with the Siji regarding a few aspects.
> About the sessions even I experienced the same thing. A few simple things
> could have been done eleminate the inconvenience caused.
>
> 1. Since there were more than 2 venues, there should have been a map on the
> back of the schedule.

There were separate venue maps printed and distributed on the first
day ( registration ) of
event. Maybe they got over by the time you reached there.

> 2. More posters at the venue, indicating way to xyz hall and also mentioning
> relevant landmarks on the map.

There were direction marks clearly indicating direction with arrows
and room numbers.
They were posted on trees, stairs and walls on the way to rooms esp. electrical
department rooms.  We made sure that they were there. I don't know when and who
removed them.

> 3. There should have been small teams of 2-3 volunteers assigned with a
> Single responsible person or group leader assigned for specific session. It
> is very important at this stage that the roles and responsibilities of the
> volunteers is well defined. What I saw was, volunteers were randomly moving
> around the venue.
>

This is acceptable to some extent but then again FUDCon is a barcamp style,
self organizing conference. So essentially speakers are required to take the
lead in organizing the sessions by themselves. Maybe this message was't
well received by the audience.

So essentially, the keyword here is "barcamp". We tried our best to avoid
confusion by pre-scheduling most of the session, making it easier for audience
and speakers. Othewise in FUDCon all the scheduling happens
at the venue. With such a huge crowd it would have been chaotic to do that.

Please do not misunderstand FUDCon with the way most of the conferences
are organized in India.

Thanks for your feedback. We will try to fix these issues for a next FUDCon.

Also correct me if I have myself misunderstood your feedback.

/tuxdna