Childcare offered - has anyone ever tried this?
Cait
I'm not involved with doing any BarCamps at all in fact.
One of the reasons why I've never been able to attend properly is
because of lack of childcare. We've just had BarCamp 3 in London
announced and it got me thinking - it's probably too late to help get
it together for this one, but it would be useful to know if anyone's
tried it anywhere before I start elbowing the London people in the
ribs and saying "Let me help to make this event easier for people with
kids to attend".
Seriously, the last major conference I attended was whilst I was
pregnant with my first child, in *2003*. It must be the case that
there are Mums* (and Dads) who would like to have a (suitably
qualified) creche person or people available, who would pay for that,
even if the event in itself were free. I would.
Anyone: experience? thoughts? Also, any of the London 3 guys here? It
might be worthwhile taking the discussion offline to think about it in
the future? Believe me, I'm more than happy to put in the legwork.
Thanks for your time!
C.
*that's "Moms" for all you American folk ;)
Seafarer
childcare this past summer at their Chicago conference. Kristy Sammis
did a lot of the conference logistics and might be able to give you
some tips, or Elisa Camahort. The BlogHer conferences page is
http://blogher.com/topic/blogher-conferences.
You're on the right track and I know a lot of parents would really
appreciate your efforts.
Sheila
Tara Hunt
We didn't do full-on childcare at BarCampBlock, but we had a very visible 'kids room' in the center of the action, where adults took turns watching over and playing with the kids that came.
Tara
tara 'miss rogue' hunt
co-founder & CMO
Citizen Agency (www.citizenagency.com)
blog: www.horsepigcow.com
phone: 415-694-1951
fax: 415-727-5335
Tom Weir
MindCamp. Two things I noticed:
1) There were some organized activities planned (building marshmallow
guns, etc)
2) At least a few of the kids were wearing "No photos please" tags.
As a parent, #2 is very important to me. I really don't want to have
photos of my kids on the web, there are too many freaks trolling for
cute pictures.
If childcare is offered, I would suggest talking with other
organizations that offer on-demand childcare (gyms, churches, etc),
for some pointers. For example, at the church I attend, all children
(including visitors) are signed in by the parents. Each child is given
a numbered tag to wear, and the parent is given a corresponding
'ticket'. The 'ticket' is required in order to get your kid out of the
care facility. A simple way to do this would be to take a digital
picture of parent+kid(s) when they're dropped off. Check the photo
when the parent comes to pick up the kid.
Other important points:
1) Ensure the kids are in a controlled environment. I.e. make sure
random strangers can't interact with them, and that the kids can't
wander off.
2) Make sure you have enough volunteers (& a schedule), so that you
can maintain a proper ratio. Always have at least two volunteers at
any given time.
Bottom line: responsible childcare is difficult to do in an adhoc
manner, and there are a lot of potential risks & liabilities. Be
careful.
That said, more power to you. A set of guidelines that addresses the
above issues would be incredibly helpful.
Regards,
Tom
planspark
of childcare and make the event more family-friendly:
http://barcampberlin2.mixxt.de/networks/wiki/index.Kids (in German)
Tim
Cait
I was actually thinking of having paid professional chidcare help
there rather than having volunteers to be honest.
The way I reckon is, a) a lot of the sponsors want to be seen as being
famlee friendlee like, so they may well help to subsidise it and
secondly, the price of a night out is probably approximately the
amount of money that you'd end up paying. and when you consider what a
fantastic *day* out you get instead, that's pretty good value.
The "no photos please" thing may sound weird to non-parents reading
but yes, a really good point.
I'm glad the idea's getting positive response. it spurs me on!
C.
--
Hello. It is me.
Cait
resource is used.
Um, not a great German speaker / reader so if anyone could furnish me
with a report as and when, that would be great!
C.
Pete Prodoehl
Your email was forwarded to the barcampmilwaukee list, and there are a
few people thinking about this issue. At BarCampMilwaukee2 last weekend,
we had a few kids there. My session titled 'Popsicle Sticks 2.0' saw
about 5 kids staying busy with glue guns and craft sticks for a while,
and we also had a giant Lego table to keep kids busy. There was no
'official' child card, but we were pretty kid-friendly and a few parents
brought theirs along for a while. Maybe we need a KidsCamp to run
parallel to BarCamp. :)
http://flickr.com/photos/raster/1573957020/
http://flickr.com/photos/raster/1573951848/
http://flickr.com/photos/raster/1573004695/
Pete
Liz Henry
of the guys there stepped up to take care of babies and the younger
kids, so that the women could go to sessions without having the
distraction of kids in tow. That was especially nice.
I brought my son to several BarCamps, and brought him a laptop with
DVDs, some legos, and comic books. He played with the older kids who
also appreciated the books and toys.
At BarCampBlock I tried to be a bit more organized, and provided a
kids' room stocked with K'nex, crayons, Legos, and beanbags. That
worked really well for kids around age 4-10.
BlogHer had paid outside childcare, with parent volunteer helper
signup slots. That works super well. That also worked well at Wiscon
(not a tech conference, a feminist science fiction convention). At
ConQuest (a Bay Area game con) there is a kids' room with a supervisor
at the door. Parents must stay with kids under 7. For older kids, they
can be dropped off, either with the privilege to leave the room on
their own (for older ones) or they have to be signed out by a
responsible adult. This worked extremely well. The younger kids had
lots of supervision, and the older ones had a safe space to hang out
in. The room was stocked with huge amounts of cool board games.
I think that the more formal the arrangement, the more you will have
to deal with insurance or release forms with the babysitters, or nanny
agency, and/or the hotel or conference space, and the event
planners.
In retrospect, for future BarCamps, I would set up two rooms for
kids. One for the older kids, who are better socialized, quieter, and
toilet trained. Another room for infants and toddlers. The older
kids play with toys that are unsafe for the little ones -- legos and
things with tiny bits that are choking hazards. The little kids are
louder, and more chaotic, and cry more, and then the big kids get
extremely annoyed and start to misbehave in response. Also, the babies
and little kids had a ton of STUFF... carseats, strollers, diaper
bags, and all that. Their needs are very different.
Ideally, I would hire a nanny or babysitter through somewhat informal
channels. And volunteering to run sessions for (or just sit on the
floor and play with) older kids would be a slot on the BarCamp
schedule. The more hours you can cover with that backup professional
childcare person, the better -- including into the evening for social
events and dinner.
Even more ideally there would be cool techie stuff for kids to mess
with in addition to board games and Legos. Gadgets, laptops, old
equipment and tools so they can take things apart... OLPC would be
kind of nifty...
I will start a page on barcamp.org and put some of this info up in a
more organized way.
Cheers,
Liz
Liz Henry
l...@bookmaniac.net
http://bookmaniac.net
http://liz-henry.blogspot.com
Cait
I think it would be useful to get some feedback from the BlogHer
organisers re: what worked well, what they'd do differently, etc.
I'll dig in to that & will post it up in a few days. It could be
useful to create a "Do's and don'ts" checklist of some sort based on
experience.
C.
edward.v...@gmail.com
The older one went around handing out stickers, and the younger
one anchored the kid space that emerged mid-day with a bunch
of Hexabits building blocks.
http://flickr.com/photos/jhritz/1781374376/
We've started to think about (and perhaps actually plan) an
"arborparentscamp" where the expectation would be that the
parents would come with kids; there's an existing parents list
which has a huge slew of people on it and if you can somehow
mix Open Space meetings with kid-friendly activities it should
be awesome.
thanks
Ed
"Arbcamp - commercializing Barcamp's values since 2007"
On Oct 31, 5:30 am, Cait <cait.hur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Liz - starting a page = brilliant idea.
>
> I think it would be useful to get some feedback from the BlogHer
> organisers re: what worked well, what they'd do differently, etc.
>
> I'll dig in to that & will post it up in a few days. It could be
> useful to create a "Do's and don'ts" checklist of some sort based on
> experience.
>
> C.
>