[fedora-india] Fudcon (worst) Experience

[Amit Shah]

Thanks Saleem for pulling this in to the Fedora mailing lists.

On (Tue) 08 Nov 2011 [01:28:15], tuxdna wrote:
> 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.

I doubt that; we had several copies, maybe some people didn't pick them up.

> > 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.

Well we put them up in the morning but the college authorities made us
take them down.  I agree this was a big negative, and looks like we
couldn't do anything other than providing the maps.  We tried to keep
our posters near the session rooms and walkways so that people could
spot them from afar.  That was a poor workaround to having direction
signs around the campus.

> > 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.

I'm trying to understand what was lacking.  Maybe I don't have enough
context.  Can you please elaborate?

> 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.

Absolutely.  Also, this was our conference, each one of us.  We're all
friends in the Fedora community, and we'd love to have people come up
and pitch in for help where you thought the organisers or volunteers
weren't up to the mark.  We'd also have loved feedback during the conf
so that the experience could've been better for the others.

		Amit
-- 
http://log.amitshah.net/