Plan

[Juozas Joe Kaziukenas]

Hi,

while we are discussing a name in the other thread, let's discuss what
we want to do.

My idea was to run it on April 13th-14th.
First day as a conference, second as a hackathon.
Conference day both with preset talks and barcamp style talks.
Both days' evenings - social events.

I'm now discussing with a bunch of folks about a possible venue.

Any ideas about what we should have or do?

[Max Manders]

On 17/01/12 09:22, Juozas Joe Kaziukenas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> while we are discussing a name in the other thread, let's discuss what
> we want to do.
>
> My idea was to run it on April 13th-14th.

Sounds good. Some folk might not be able to make the Friday due to e.g.
work commitments, but a hackathon event on the Saturday would allow
those who miss the 13th to still be included. Would we therefore
consider the two as separate events, or at the very least allow people
to _only_ come to the Saturday event? Or is this just overcomplicating
what is already a big undertaking?

> First day as a conference, second as a hackathon.

Any thoughts on a theme or project or goal for the hackathon?

> Conference day both with preset talks and barcamp style talks.
> Both days' evenings - social events.

Single track though presumably, just mixing up the styles of the
different slots?

>
> I'm now discussing with a bunch of folks about a possible venue.
>
> Any ideas about what we should have or do?

/me puts thinking cap on.

--
Max Manders
w: http://maxmanders.co.uk
e: m...@maxmanders.co.uk
t: +44 (0) 7866 797 983

[Juozas]

Juozas Kaziukėnas

On 17/01/12 09:28, Max Manders wrote:
> On 17/01/12 09:22, Juozas Joe Kaziukenas wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> while we are discussing a name in the other thread, let's discuss what
>> we want to do.
>>
>> My idea was to run it on April 13th-14th.
> Sounds good. Some folk might not be able to make the Friday due to
> e.g. work commitments, but a hackathon event on the Saturday would
> allow those who miss the 13th to still be included. Would we therefore
> consider the two as separate events, or at the very least allow people
> to _only_ come to the Saturday event? Or is this just overcomplicating
> what is already a big undertaking?

Conferences usually happen at working days as they are kind of
work-related events. Weekends are for family, etc. I guess we can have a
separate entries to those, so people could choose.

>
>> First day as a conference, second as a hackathon.
> Any thoughts on a theme or project or goal for the hackathon?

I'll wait for people who actually been to hackathons to comment. I
wasn't yet :)

>
>> Conference day both with preset talks and barcamp style talks.
>> Both days' evenings - social events.
> Single track though presumably, just mixing up the styles of the
> different slots?

Yeah I thought so too. So in a morning talks start and people have time
to sign up to talk. And then mixed schedule happens. We can do 15min
barcamp talks and up to 45min normal ones.

[lornajane]

This plan is looking excellent already - I love the idea of having
more structured content on the Friday and then something more
hackathon on the Saturday. Having a barcamp/unconference track
alongside timetabled content is also likely to work well.

Hackathons: I think the best one I've been to was at php|tek last
year, they basically went around asking which project leads would be
prepared to have their project as part of it. At the start of the
event, all the project leads said a bit about their project, then set
up camp in different corners of the room and hacked away with anyone
who wanted to get involved. We could include a PHP testfest as well
if we had some core devs able to support that.

It's a relatively short turnaround time to organise an event, let me
know if I can help at all (I've done this before!)

Lorna

[Juozas]

Interestingly we are going to have... at least 3 PHP core devs present :)

Interesting hackathon happened last year here -
http://culturehackscotland.com/. It's happening this year also, later in
April so we can't replicate it, but that's an idea. Bringing data and
devs, and making them creating wonders.

I'm well aware of a short time turnaround time, but I'm trying my best.
My biggest work right now is trying to secure a venue.

If we can decide on a name quickly, I will get a website up and then it
can actually be promoted well to create some interest in various
communities.

Juozas Kaziukėnas

[Dougal Matthews]

On Tuesday, 17 January 2012 at 10:28, Juozas wrote:

> Interestingly we are going to have... at least 3 PHP core devs present :)

Open source scotland (either intentionally or unintentionally) had a very PHP oriented lineup.

Do you think this will be the focus of the new event or not? I would suggest that if it is the focus, it is marketed as such.

Dougal

[Juozas]

I don't think so we should focus on php. Php confs are a mix of topics anyway.

Those core devs are coming as attendees.
--
Juozas Kaziukenas. Sent from my BlackBerry

[Dougal Matthews]

On Tuesday, 17 January 2012 at 10:41, Juozas wrote:
> I don't think so we should focus on php. Php confs are a mix of topics anyway.
>
> Those core devs are coming as attendees.

Ok, that suits me as somebody that chooses to use other languages. I guess my concern would then be that it is a bit too general to attract any particular audience and gain momentum.

As for the day of talks, I guess you just need to wait and see what proposals you get and then figure our the number of tracks and topics. Obviously the venue would limit this too however.

For the hackathon, would you provide a focus or aim to guide people? I ask simply because I organised a number of Python sprints and had people show up and then basically ask "what do we do now?". The solution that worked well for us was to say; come along and hack on what you want, if your not really sure what to do we will help you hack get started with hacking on Django. So perhaps a few key people can mentor specific sprints or projects.

Hope this is somewhat useful.

Dougal

[Juozas]

Very fair points.

We need to probably focus more than OSS, as it's immensely broad. Myself
would like to focus on web, what do you guys think?

Comment about hackathon really makes a lot of sense. So we have someone
from Django, we'll have someone from PHP language and... well, 2
already, I'm sure we would get some more.

Juozas Kaziukėnas

[Paul Dragoonis]

Joe,

Lets setup a meetup.com page for this perhaps? then people can sign up and we get visibility of the attendees.

[sherred]

Regarding the hackathon a method I've seen work quite well in the past
is to have people submit project ideas beforehand.
Then on the day every idea is gets a 60 second pitch. At the end of
the round show of hands determines which go to the next stage.
In the second round all remaining ideas get a 2 minute q&a after which
attendees can decide which one to join.

At the same time if anyone has their own idea they want to work on
their own of with a predetermined team, they are free to do so.

I agree with Juozas and would like to see a focus on web. In that case
the name could simply be Alba Web Conference, albawebconf.com, .net
and .org are all available.

Paolo

[Paul Dragoonis]

Thanks for the response Paolo. It's good to see people like my Alba suggestion.

I like the domain name idea and if we decide to go with it i'm happy to buy the domain name and host the website for us.

- Paul.

[Joshua Thijssen]

Is there an idea yet on how to select talks? I enjoyed the open
submission from Confoo this year, but I saw there was another conference
where users could submit ideas they wanted to listen too (ie: i'd like
to hear something about advanced couchdb, intro in python etc etc).

Paul Dragoonis wrote:
> Thanks for the response Paolo. It's good to see people like my Alba
> suggestion.
>
> I like the domain name idea and if we decide to go with it i'm happy to
> buy the domain name and host the website for us.
>
> - Paul.
>
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 4:41 PM, sherred <paolo.c...@gmail.com
> <mailto:paolo.c...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Regarding the hackathon a method I've seen work quite well in the past
> is to have people submit project ideas beforehand.
> Then on the day every idea is gets a 60 second pitch. At the end of
> the round show of hands determines which go to the next stage.
> In the second round all remaining ideas get a 2 minute q&a after which
> attendees can decide which one to join.
>
> At the same time if anyone has their own idea they want to work on
> their own of with a predetermined team, they are free to do so.
>
> I agree with Juozas and would like to see a focus on web. In that case
> the name could simply be Alba Web Conference, albawebconf.com

> <http://albawebconf.com>, .net

> and .org are all available.
>
> Paolo
>
> On Jan 17, 2:02 pm, Juozas <juo...@juokaz.com

[Max Manders]

I don't think that's been formalised yet. There were discussions in
Freenode (##scottechconf) earlier this evening where we decided the key
things to concentrate on right now were a definite theme for the
conference, a format (one/two tracks, slot length etc.) and organising a
venue.

I don't have much personal experience attending conferences, but if it's
practical, I quite like the idea of users submitting requests for what
they want to hear; a novel approach!

On 17/01/12 21:21, Joshua Thijssen wrote:
> Is there an idea yet on how to select talks? I enjoyed the open
> submission from Confoo this year, but I saw there was another conference
> where users could submit ideas they wanted to listen too (ie: i'd like
> to hear something about advanced couchdb, intro in python etc etc).
>

--

[Juozas]

Hey,

we are not sure about the CfP yet. We don't have much time to run it
(max couple weeks). We might as well just get suggestions in/proposals
in, in a free form and decide from that.

That's all undecided though so might change. Suggestions for content are
welcome. We can get both couchdb and python kick ass talks here for
example ;)

Juozas Kaziukėnas

On 17/01/12 21:21, Joshua Thijssen wrote:

[Dale Harvey]

Forwarding on some tips from a friend (he helps run jsconf / jsconf.eu / berlin buzzwords)

Awesome, glad to help :) Some notes:

0. Make sure you have a great team.

1. Establish a common goal with your orga team. Something like "great general tech conference for attendees" or "we must make a shit ton of money from this". It doesn't really matter what it is, but it should reflect everybody's prime objective. A lot of questions that come up down the road can be answered by looking at this. e.g. at JSConf EU, famously, we had a some spare money and instead of pocketing it, we bought the coffee guys, to make it more awesome, because that's our mantra "awesome conf" and not "we gotta earn some dough on the side".

2. Budget: Find out who you cater to, how much they'd pay, how many you want to come and thus how much income you have. Discuss discount policies for students and press (we generally just don't have them). Keep a meticulous spreadsheed (gdocs!) that everybody has access to and that at least one person is responsible/accountable for, ideally with a second pair of eyes for backup (in case the person becomes inactive for whatever reason and of course making sure it is all correct).

3. Treat speakers like kings. The best way to get speakers is to promise them a good time. Budget permitting, pay their travel, accommodation, for train, sport first class, for hotels, look at the swankier ones. Our biggest budget item by far is usually the speaker travel and accommodation.

4. Sponsors: a) try and get a fringe budget together where attendees pay for everything, allow sponsors to improve certain aspects, say better food, longer open bar, extra coffee, video recording, etc. This gives you a stronger negotiation position because you can always run the conference without sponsors. b) give sponsors tangible items. Say the afterparty could become the Mozilla afterparty if they pay for the booze, lunch could be Microsoft lunch, if they ramp up the quality, ThoughtWorks could get a premium spot in the videos (in-conf and post-production as well as video download site in return for sponsoring the videos. c) create "sponsorship packages" that include all the perks (# of tickets for the conf, banners, whatever else and a price tag, make them silver/gold/platinum style, becoming rarer and more pricy towards the top, reserve a "top sponsor" for some ridiculous amount. lowest rate should be something a startup would be comfortable with, say ~1k€. Sponsors will want to negotiate derivations from the packages, which is fine, and go with that, but they make a great baseline for discussion) d) I'm happy to do a bit of reach out, once you have sponsorship packages ready.

5. Say no to a lot of things that distract you from getting the core of the conference right.

Also:

 http://www.nonblocking.io/2011/10/jsconf-eu-how-to-guide.html
 http://www.nonblocking.io/2011/05/how-to-make-wifi-work-at-tech.html

Let me know if you have any other questions :)

Good luck!

On 17 January 2012 22:31, Juozas <juo...@juokaz.com> wrote:

Hey,

we are not sure about the CfP yet. We don't have much time to run it (max couple weeks). We might as well just get suggestions in/proposals in, in a free form and decide from that.

That's all undecided though so might change. Suggestions for content are welcome. We can get both couchdb and python kick ass talks here for example ;)

Juozas Kaziukėnas

On 17/01/12 21:21, Joshua Thijssen wrote:

Is there an idea yet on how to select talks? I enjoyed the open
submission from Confoo this year, but I saw there was another conference
where users could submit ideas they wanted to listen too (ie: i'd like
to hear something about advanced couchdb, intro in python etc etc).

Paul Dragoonis wrote:

Thanks for the response Paolo. It's good to see people like my Alba
suggestion.

I like the domain name idea and if we decide to go with it i'm happy to
buy the domain name and host the website for us.

- Paul.

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 4:41 PM, sherred<paolo.ciarrocca@gmail.com
<mailto:paolo.ciarrocca@gmail.com>>  wrote:

[Juozas]

DIBI is happening at similar time and talking similar topics http://www.dibiconference.com/, however I guess our goal is to be a Scottish conference easily accessible for people here.

They ask £300 which is quite steep for someone to pay out of their own pocket. We should focus and make it affordable (as much as possible).

That's some ideas about our possible goals.

Juozas Kaziukėnas

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 4:41 PM, sherred<paolo.c...@gmail.com
<mailto:paolo.c...@gmail.com>>  wrote:

[Paul Dragoonis]

If we can get a cheap venue, and the speakers voluntarily show then our outgoing costs are pretty low, we can charge a very small amount.

 I agree that with our goals.

Secondly, I agree with a goal of an accessible conf for the local communities in the central scotland belt, and north england.

[Dale Harvey]

And another email from a friend who is a serial conference organiser 

Well, er, what he said basically :)

I can only add that you should assume that you will not sell any tickets at all and not get any sponsors, and select a venue accordingly. Maybe even arrange for a University or benign company with a good meeting space to provide it for free in exchange to become a sponsor (of some reasonable level, and present one of the speakers or some such).

My next conference (after Crash & Burn), for example, will be Dyncon, which I have defensively tucked in at a company venue where they also provide food for the two days, leaving me only exposed to speaker flights and lodging.

Please let me/us know how it goes. I think Jan has you covered with sponsorships but just in case, give me the material too, just in case. 

Cheers,
PS

[James Baster]

On Jan 17, 10:28 am, Juozas <juo...@juokaz.com> wrote:
> Interesting hackathon happened last year here -http://culturehackscotland.com/. It's happening this year also, later in

> April so we can't replicate it, but that's an idea. Bringing data and
> devs, and making them creating wonders.

Some comments from Culture Hack Scotland; the feedback was that it is
good to get people with ideas together with people who can code. CHS
didn't do this so well, and there were developers working on ideas
that weren't practical in real life and idea people coming up with
basic/vague ideas because they weren't guided technically. I know this
is something CHS2 will address and other hackdays I have been to have
tackled this.

Others have talked about people pitching ideas at the start and
something like this to help teams form could work well, and I would
try to make it clear non-tech people with ideas are welcome to join in
to.
Also if you do get some open data sets, try to get the people who
provided them to join in all day to.