Unconference preparation

The unconference is next week! And I haven’t prepared anything to present yet!

I’ve been looking at the barcamp wiki and their tips on hosting an unconference/barcamp, and I think we have most bases covered. The two bloggers linked to on issues to think about when running an unconference provide a great overview.

Darren Barefoot says:

1. Despite it being an ‘unconference’, where everybody’s all groovy and doing their own thing, you still need a few people to be dogged organizers and keep things running smoothly. Specifically, you need to make sure sessions start and end on time. This is an unpopular but fairly essential job.

4. You should be able to borrow projectors from participants. They’re expensive to rent. [I think we’ve got this covered. The State Library should have projectors.]

8. This one is obvious (and, I think, a tenent [sic] of BarCamp), but do the scheduling first thing in the morning with everybody standing in front of the scheduling board. Use post-its and butcher’s paper for the board, so that it can be changed on the fly. Don’t try to maintain a parallel electronic version of the schedule. Here’s what our schedule looked like. [Here’s people picking slots to do their presentations, at the recent Perth Barcamp.]

9. Leave some time for networking in the schedule.

From Crystal Williams’s great list:

• …I recommend setting up a Skype or IRC chat. Very useful for real-time collaboration without the hassle of in-person meetings [hear, hear]
• …Wi-Fi Guru: People are going to want wi-fi, and may even need it for their presentation. In order to provide this, you’re going to need a decent internet connection and several routers to handle the traffic. Someone needs to set this up and keep it running during the camp. [thanks to Nick Cowie for his help with this!]
• Make lists of all the minor things you need to round up: Projectors, paper, markers, pens, nametags, paper towels, garbage bags, toilet paper, surface cleaners, kitchen gadgets for breakfast/lunch, ice chests, garbage cans. etc. Put the list on the wiki and try to get people to bring or donate as many of these as possible. Borrowing is way better than buying whenever possible.
• In-person Meetings are overrated. Unless you all need to view the space or exchange something in person, keep it online. [so far I haven’t attended a single meeting to plan this!]
• Don’t over-complicate things. Don’t let other people over-complicate things. This is surprisingly hard. People have lots and lots of cool ideas that they want to execute to make your Barcamp awesome. That’s great as long as it doesn’t sidetrack the organizers. Try to get things accomplished in the order in which they are absolutely necessary. If you have a location, shirts, food, sponsors, etc locked down, then people can go nuts with the extras. [Librarians can be great at over-complicating things! 😉 But I don’t think we’ve been too bad this time…]
• Don’t get anyone’s company books involved. Too messy. Either deal in all cash or get a special paypal account. At the end of the day, you don’t want to be holding extra money. Best to get people to sponsor things like chair rentals, a meal, etc, and never touch the money yourself.
• Don’t get too slack about the “everyone must participate” rule. It’s not just about attendance, it’s about knowledge transfer. Make sure people don’t think that it’s just a tech thing – creative talks are well received as long as they’re well thought out.

And, from my aggregator, Lilia Efimova shares a few links to information on unconferences. I especially need to read Scott Berkun’s How to run a great unconference session. And I need to start preparing!