It’s been a little over five months since BarCamp NewsInnovation, and that has given us plenty of time to mull over the event’s successes and failures. BCNI Godfather Jason Kristufek has already weighted in, and I have a similar question to ask the BCNI community: what should change from last year’s event?
Last year’s BarCamp in Philly was wonderful from a networking and the “Hey, I know you on Twitter!” angle. It was also fascinating to give attention to members of our community who don’t normally get to occupy center stage. CoPress presented to university chairs. Punks like me got to ask the Web Ninjas at the Washington Post questions about their new projects.
Industry giants like The Philadelphia Inquirer opened up their workflow to the world while startups like Publish2 gave us a peak at what they were up to.
BarCamp also fell short on several fronts. The conference was perhaps too open, and I did a poor job of explaining to people how the event worked. But BCNI’s biggest failure was the lack of a product. Some thing to point to and say “Hey, that came out of BCNI!”
So as next April creeps up and wheels are set in motion for next round of BCNI events, we are mulling over some changes and I’d like the feedback of attendees and the community. First, the proposed big changes:
- We need a hack day. I bemoaned the lack of a product, and we are considering making part or all of the event a hack day-like event where a challenge is given to team to come up with a specific product. And the end of the day we all present our ideas and awards are given out. For inspiration, check out what the Guardian did. There are, or course, a few hurdles here. Largely, that a Hack Day should really consist of a 24-hour period. Secondly, I would guess that less than five percent of last year’s attendees were computer programmers. Most hacks may be a bunch of similar looking mashups using tools like Google Maps that don’t require extensive programming knowledge.
- The pre-event board. Someone, and apologies for not remembering whom, suggested that we crowdsource the creation of the schedule before the event. That is, we have a period of time where people can submit topics they’d like to hear about and then a period of time where people volunteer to speak about that topic. We would still leave blocks of “free time” where people can sign up for a presentation the day of the event, but this might help better build buzz and attract some people that were scared by the “unconference” format while still preserving the openness.
Minor changes:
- List of attendees before the event. Last year we didnt reveal who was attending. This was a mistake and stopped some important pre-event networking from happening.
- A Shorter event. The day was about two hours too long. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. would have made more sense.
This is just a small subset of my ideas, but really I’d like to hear what you guys think. Did you attend last year? Did you want to? Are you interested in another event?
Please, comment below or weigh in on Twitter using #bcni.
5 Comments
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For the sake of prosperity, I’ll post my comment here too. Hack days are really cool but rarely are productive. We had one in Seattle at some point in the near past that was productive at bringing people together but didn’t build anything significant. In addition, a hack day is a different type of event (albeit of the same ethos) than a BarCamp. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be done; rather, it might be more productive as a separate event or a lead-up to the main BarCamp.
The other idea I’d like to bring to the table, however, is to have a demo pit. It would be sweet to have designated space where people can show off what they’re working on and get feedback.
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Sean,
I really like your train of thought here — taking something that was good the first time and making it better.
Simple stuff, like getting the list of participants out ahead of time, along with clear guidelines on how the day will run, could help. So would making sure we all have maps of where all the meeting rooms are.
I like the idea of a sort of SXSW style proposal phase that gets some number of sessions pre-planned. That might help you put the big draws into the bigger rooms and keep them from getting scheduled against each other.
What if you invited people with ideas in the works to lead sessions where people critique, brainstorm and generally help move them to launch? So maybe it doesn’t start something from scratch but it does help something move into reality that might not have?
How about a keynote speaker at lunch OR a lunch that has topics identified for people to discuss at tables around the room? I know feeding people increases the expense but it could be optional and people could pay for their own meals.
Glad you’re already looking for ways to improve the event. Good luck!
Colleen
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While promotion on social networks was key to the success of this past year’s BarCamp, you should definitely take advantage of local resources this year. I am slightly biased in this regard, obviously, but I think reaching out to local colleges and media organizations would increase the number of people attending. For example, a lot of people didn’t know what I was talking about when I said I had just come back from BarCamp Philly — perhaps some sort of release to local outlets would be helpful.
Also, I agree with Colleen that a keynote speaker over lunch would be ideal. Obviously there are cost considerations with this but it’s something worth considering.
Good luck! Let me know if I can do anything to help.
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Sean,
I agree with you on the high points and the takeaways from the first #BCNI Philly. There were a lot of positives and I hope not to diminish that fact. You did a fantastic job of putting it on.
I do, however, think your ideas and suggestions are a good place to start on how to improve the events. I look forward to seeing how this grows. You have good ideas.
What do you think the next steps are? To me, identifying some of the more progressive ideas that don’t yet have solutions might be a good place to start. Also, we could contact some of those organizations that are looking for solutions and get them involved and agree to try some things that come out of barcamp. I know The Gazette here in Cedar Rapids would be open to it. I’m sure there are more.
Thoughts?
Thanks for pushing this out. I’m glad the conversation is continuing.
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+1 to Colleen’s ideas. I like the idea of having planning go on before the event in an open, web, collaborative space.