Suggestions for a better barcamp

[Kenney Jacob]

http://www.sajanpappachen.com/blog/a-better-barcamp/

How about implementing some of these suggestions ? 

Kenney Jacob

FaceBook Twitter Blog Company 

The Most Powerful Tool to Improve Your Vocabulary. Wordzo. 

[Rahul P M]

Great! lets do it

Thanks and regards 

Rahul PM

rahu...@gmail.com

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[saran.c...@gmail.com]

which all?

[Kenney Jacob]

Crowd sourced logo creation and selection 

Tag line 

Badges for speakers (will require funds) 

Kenney Jacob

FaceBook Twitter Blog Company 

The Most Powerful Tool to Improve Your Vocabulary. Wordzo. 

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

The first two seems feasible. But the 3rd one, is it really necessary? 

[Sajan Pappachen]

No sir, actually no direct funding required. There are some options:

1. Any participant company can sponsor it. Let's highlight them in website and next edition as badge sponsors.

2. We will invest some money for badge primarily. Consider we need Rs 1000 for 50 badges. We will explain it in next edition that this badge costs Rs 20/piece. As we have no funding, each one has to pay Rs 20 for this one. If the badge can be branded as an icon of pride, this won't be a matter for participants. 

 

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

What's the use of a badge in Barcamp? It should be as unofficial as possible. 

 

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[Eldhose Csharks]

i doubt the money collecting from attendees, badges for speaker etc may spoil the thoughts of "un-conference"
but again the quality of sessions, more promotion to the event etc can be done

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Sajan Pappachen <mrsajan....@gmail.com> wrote:

 

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[Jayson Joseph Chacko]

Does this mean that in future, if someone walks across to a barcamp and then writes a session on the board, you will kick him out?  :-)

[Moitheen Sha]

Barred camp...
Bar camp...
Bad camp...
Badge Camp...

wats nxt guys ?

-----Original Message-----
From: saran.c...@gmail.com
Sent: 08/11/2012, 12:20 PM
To: barcam...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [barcampkerala] Suggestions for a better barcamp


What's the use of a badge in Barcamp? It should be as unofficial as
possible.

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Sajan Pappachen <
mrsajan....@gmail.com> wrote:

>

>> No sir, actually no direct funding required. There are some options:

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

My thought on your thoughts on a better BarCamp wrt the time schedule.  RTFM http://barcamp.org/w/page/405173/TheRulesOfBarCamp .
Logo idea seems nice, so does the tagline. 
Social cause: If there's a session for a social cause, there'll be discussions and interactions. Why should something always stand for social cause? 

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 12:23 PM, Eldhose Csharks <eldhose...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Binoy xavier joy]

Instead of a badge someone can develop 4sq like app with badges and other virtual rewards ;)

Regards,
Binoy Xavier Joy

[Hari K T]

I don't feel we need logo design. Almost every Barcamp is using the same logo.

Are we creating another X camp ?

Timing is good.

Thanks

Hari K T
M: +91-9388758821 | W: http://harikt.com/blog

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

Hari, 

As I've mentioned earlier, please go through the rules of BarCamp: http://barcamp.org/w/page/405173/TheRulesOfBarCamp 

If you're introducing time constraint, it will be like any other Conference. BarCamp will loose the "un-conference" factor in it. Its all about the freedom of an individual. I'm not quite sure, if you had attended the 4th BarCamp Kerala event at IIM-K, which had the time constraint. It was horrendous. Many people actually left the event quite early. 

I hope you understand. 

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

The Rules of BarCamp

• 1st Rule: You do talk about BarCamp.
• 2nd Rule: You do blog about BarCamp.
• 3rd Rule: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a presentation slot.
• 4th Rule: Only three word intros.
• 5th Rule: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.
• 6th Rule: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists.
• 7th Rule: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.
• 8th Rule: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (Ok, you don't really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions and be an interactive participant.)

[Nirmal Balachandran]

@Saran, 
If we were to follow the exact rules of Barcamp, I agree with your points. Promoting products and companies are discouraged, but tell me how many bar camps did we have without these? 

So as Hari and others said, we need to have a time slot, not restricting it too much, but there should be an upper limit. 

Regards

Nirmal 

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

See, if someone's promoting products/companies, the participants of the BarCamp can raise their voice against it, Kenney? There should be an upper limit, but why explicitly say so? If one feels like the speaker is taking too much time, they can tell him. They have the freedom to do so. 

[Nirmal Balachandran]

@Saran,

"If one feels like the speaker is taking too much time, they can tell him. They have the freedom to do so. " This is what I'm also saying.. instead of interrupting the speaker and saying you are exceeding the limit or your topic is boring, why cant we fix a slot. The first way of saying might even be an embarrassing moment for the speaker. 

You mentioned IIMK event had time slots and people went too early. See what happened in the last Barcamp, there were hardly 50% turn out for the last three sessions because it was going well past 5:30. I'm not telling there should be strict enforcing of time, but there should be some limit as well.

Regards

Nirmal   

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

Nirmal,

The reason why that happened at IIM-K was not because the sessions ended on right time, but it was commonly felt that the whole event was hijacked(if i'm allowed to say so), by the IIM guys and called it WiproCamp (WiCamp or something). 

Coming to fixing the slots, how do you plan to execute it?

[Nirmal Balachandran]

@Saran,

Well my suggestion is that, when we open the session registration, we need to have another column "What is the expected time for your session" . The speaker can set his or her session time and once it is fixed, he can use a maximum of 15 minutes extra. For example, if a speaker enters 30 minutes as his session time, he can at the max go for 45 minutes, this way we are not restricting since the speaker is the one who is deciding on the time. 

Regards

Nirmal

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

That seems like a viable suggestion. But what happens if the discussion take too much time? i mean more time to discuss than to present? incidents like those have happened. 

[Nirmal Balachandran]

@Saran,

Agree discussions are something which is beyond control, but atleast we have a little bit of control on time and make sure that every session gets audience attention. Moreover, not all the sessions have time consuming discussions, so I guess we should be able to complete in time. 

Regards

Nirmal 

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

If discussions are going beyond time limit, the participants can call "time out". no one will be offended by it, because they have the freedom to take the discussion outside. 

[Nirmal Balachandran]

@Saran,

Exactly, discussions can be taken offline as well. 

Regards

Nirmal

[SaraN Sivarajan]

I dont agree with restricting discussions. Coz its something everyone love. Maybe demos should be prevented from having a discussion session. Other topics needs to be discussed!

[Dhanan - DhaneW Research]

Having to write down session duration at first may not keep all sessions within planned timeframe due to discussins or some other reason, but still it's a good start. Let's implement that much. How many agree?

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[Arun Basil Lal]

While I like that someone has invested some time and thought into it, I think what we are trying to (in case if we do try) is to fix a problem that doesn't exist.

New Logo? If someone come up with one, well and good.

New Tag Line? Again, the same.

Badges? Well, if we start using badges, we would need them for non-speakers as well ( like one that says "I am a virgin barcamper" for first timers and so on ). And btw, I think at a BarCamp everyone is a speaker, or at least should be. Using badges will only increase the gap between speakers and non-speakers.

The first time we ever had too many sessions was at BCK12, at Trivandrum and this time we had a 30 min time limit to tackle that. If we have too many sessions, lets keep a fair use limit, so that everyone gets a chance. But this should be without compromising the sense of an un-conference. If a sessions demands more time and the crowd is into it, there is no reason why it shouldn't exceed the limits. Thats why I used the word fair-use-limit instead of time limit.

Sharing of PPT and uploading to our slideshare account. We used to do that regularly. Point Noted.

And Self Promotions. I think its more about how you present it. Instead of presenting the product on itself, one can present a case study and some lessons / learnings that one encountered while developing the product or something. The way Kenney does it maybe :P . I think we should be worried not about the "Self Promotions" but only about the "Shameless Self Promotions". The latter is where they just advertise without providing value to the community. When you are up on the stage, the speaker is promoting himself / his product in one way or the other anyway. 

I rest my case.

Arun Basil Lal

[Dhanan - DhaneW Research]

I would agree with most of Arun's points, but we do have one important problem to fix

i.e.:  Morning sessions get the highest number of attendees. Evening sessions get only half the morning crowd. A good session may miss the attendees it deserves if it's presented after noon.

So may be from next BarCamp onwards we have to start practicing the BarCamp idea of voting for the session that will be presented first - to make sure the most 'in demand' session gets the biggest crowd.

Once we have voting in place, there is no need to keep fixed time slots, Nirmal's suggestion of advance declaration of duration by presenters is better because it's more unconference-ish and the audience have the choice to push lengthy sessions to the end if they wish so.

Best Regards,
Dhanan

[Ranjith K Avarachan]

Its a fact that in the afternoon session everyone gets sleepy.. again it is proven that a good presenter can still hold the audience at any point of time..  it would be great if the seasoned barcampers can move their topics to afternoon session so that the virgin presenters can get a better space.

sharing of ppt and sample codes should be made mandatory and links should be given in bck website.

i believe badges i will kill the unconference feel.. Logo and tagline...again i agree with what Arun Basil Lal Said


and regarding timelimits..  audience should make sure they ask only questions that are badly needed for the whole audience. most of the time we ourselves ask silly questions and extend the presentation time..  if audience is not much interested make sure we take questions directly to presenter  on a later time.  i know its not easy to be enforced.. but just a suggestion after hearing some time wasting questions at BCK13

--
@sbokjui

[Hari K T]

There is a problem of interest . One may be interested the other may not . 

So its really hard to understand .

Voting seems a good idea . BCK Bangalore has this on their website.

About time : Its because we try to cover more topics, I have experienced understanding it in BCK13. So apologies for that.

also I would say we can make 2 or 3 sessions going parallel ?

[SaraN Sivarajan]

http://barcampomaha.org/  Inspiration!

[Kenney Jacob]

That is a heavy design !!!

From the discussion I assume that most barcampers are ok with the logo suggestion and the session voting for the next event. 

Kenney Jacob

FaceBook Twitter Blog Company 

The Most Powerful Tool to Improve Your Vocabulary. Wordzo. 

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[Praseed Pai]

Hello all ,

    I did go through all suggestions to make the next barcamp better. The posts

revealed the inherrent human nature to control things around them.

 

I think , the next event will determine whether It is going better or

not. There is no need of governance , If possible.

 

regards

Praseed Pai

 

  

[Hari K T]

Good one Saran. I wonder from where you got it :) .

Hari K T
M: +91-9388758821 | W: http://harikt.com/blog

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[Nirmal Balachandran]

Did anyone notice a $10 registration for that Barcamp, are we gonna inspire from that as well? ;) 

Regards

Nirmal 

[saran.c...@gmail.com]

@Nirmal,

absorb the good stuff, ignore the rest.. :D

[SaraN Sivarajan]

Got it while browsing for some design inspiration. From some web design blog. Forgot the source. 

[Vineeth Jose]

Lets keep it an unconference as it is supposed to be, don't control too much. A manager always wants total control, barcamp needs to be seen in a different perspective.