Monday, January 16, 2006
BarCampNYC postmortem
3 comments
BarCampNYC has come and gone - check out my quick video of BarCampNYC Saturday.
Here are some candid, brief thoughts that I typed on the ride home.
What WORKED
- Wireless routers, thank you Sunny! (but these only worked about 65% of the time)
- Badges with tags, great idea Luke - Download the BarCampNYC badges template
- Shoes off, go Kara!
- Check-in station, but I'm biased
- Sunday's group intro, kudos to Kellan
- Pizza on Saturday afternoon, easy to grab and not too greasy, helped speed up lunch
- Sushi on Saturday night, very filling
- Projectors! Thank you Hilary, Finn, Byron, Zach and Noel
- Kitchen space, kudos to Jake for hanging the paper dividers - it helped with noise and atmosphere
- 349 Broadway 9th floor, could have been less long and more square but generally no huge complaints - it worked well to be so crowded
- Sponsors! Amazing turnout for a totally free weekend
- Constant cleanup, thanks to everyone who helped throughout the weekend
- Cleanup afterwards, the hardest task all weekend, who stayed to help I wonder? Next year, I will!
- Good, intense friendly banter sessions
What to think about for next year
- Wireless routers, double our expected needs next time and ensure redundancy
- Badges, print extras for Day #2
- Printer, why did I think we'd need one? Thanks Scott
- File server, thanks Mister for bringing one, but ditto above
- Whole Foods catering didn't deliver on time, Kara was frustrated
- Lunch on Sunday, can't complain because it was free, but I didn't find it filling
- Live Rails programming demo, confusing
- Unpracticed session speeches, these never work well (mine was far from perfect)
- Elevators, broken for last 24 hours
- Towels, bring your own!
- Mac VGA connectors, I was asked literally seven times each day where to find one - thanks to those who shared
- Backchannel, it was awkward but I didn't contribute either
I forgot one more thing that WORKED - friends! I met lots of great people, too many to count, and got to know other people a little more. Thanks for being smart and helping pull this off. It says a lot that our host office didn't have anything stolen, and no attendee laptops or projectors went missing.
Oh, and the shirts. I love mine.
Update 1 - Download the BarCampNYC badges template. We printed these on Avery labels, ten per page, available at any office supply store.
Update 2 - Read Amit's summary of BarCampNYC or check out the postmortem on the BarCampNYC wiki.
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Jakob Lodwick sent me these comments on email and said it was OK to publish them here.
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Yay:
-Everyone treated the office with respect and I don't know of a single problem.
-I learned a lot and the sessions further stimulated ideas I was already thinking about.
-I talked to interesting people... almost nobody annoyed me!
-It was a testament to the possibility of self-organizing events.
Eh:
-I was pretty drained by the second day, even though all the organizing was out of my hands... maybe it was because I had a full work week before, or because I have a hyperactive brain, but by my last session I was ready for a 12-hour nap!
-The schedule became unclear in the second day. Maybe next time we could divide it up into 30-minute chunks and make sure people stick with it. I think if the framework were a bit stricter, the self-organizing would be more successful.
-The schedule was also very mentally demanding, since sessions were scheduled through lunch. I would have liked to have a break / meditation / physical activity session in there at some point, and also disallowed sessions during lunch.
-A better common area would have been good.
I think all my "eh" comments can basically be distilled into this point: I felt like we were trying to do too much in the time we had. Would BarCamp have been worse if we'd only had half as many sessions? I would say that it would have been a better overall experience because, as it stands, I'm still recovering!
Anyway, I'm completely happy we did it, and I'll certainly attend the next one and consider having another one at our office in the future.
Jakob
----------
Yay:
-Everyone treated the office with respect and I don't know of a single problem.
-I learned a lot and the sessions further stimulated ideas I was already thinking about.
-I talked to interesting people... almost nobody annoyed me!
-It was a testament to the possibility of self-organizing events.
Eh:
-I was pretty drained by the second day, even though all the organizing was out of my hands... maybe it was because I had a full work week before, or because I have a hyperactive brain, but by my last session I was ready for a 12-hour nap!
-The schedule became unclear in the second day. Maybe next time we could divide it up into 30-minute chunks and make sure people stick with it. I think if the framework were a bit stricter, the self-organizing would be more successful.
-The schedule was also very mentally demanding, since sessions were scheduled through lunch. I would have liked to have a break / meditation / physical activity session in there at some point, and also disallowed sessions during lunch.
-A better common area would have been good.
I think all my "eh" comments can basically be distilled into this point: I felt like we were trying to do too much in the time we had. Would BarCamp have been worse if we'd only had half as many sessions? I would say that it would have been a better overall experience because, as it stands, I'm still recovering!
Anyway, I'm completely happy we did it, and I'll certainly attend the next one and consider having another one at our office in the future.
Jakob
Amit sent me a quick note about post-camp cleanup.
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cleanup: kara deserves credit for organizing it like a fox: handing out slips of paper with individual tasks to attendees. It was almost all done by the time the sessions were over! the three of us + a whole bunch of attendees finished up.
------
cleanup: kara deserves credit for organizing it like a fox: handing out slips of paper with individual tasks to attendees. It was almost all done by the time the sessions were over! the three of us + a whole bunch of attendees finished up.
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