Fred StutzmanThoughts about information, social networks, and privacy

It is well-known that the first BarCamp was thrown together in something like 6 days. Compared to that, the two months we had to plan BarCampRDU seems like years. :) As I write this, we’re three days away from BarCampRDU. Once BarCampRDU is done, the organizers are going to get together and write up our lessons learned in the planning process. So I don’t forget, here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned in planning a BarCamp.

1. Get the contact information of all attendees. This is probably the number one mistake I made. Since BarCamp is free, people can sign up on whim – and forget about it. As our waitlist grew to over 50 people, I really wanted to get an accurate count of our attendees so I could let everyone in without getting a ticket from the fire marshall.
2. The first sponsor is the most difficult. It took a while before BarCampRDU had its first sponsor, but after that the offers came fast and furious. Sponsors like to see that their investment is a solid one, and most of the sponsors hadn’t heard of BarCamp prior to this event. If you’re going to plan a BarCamp, have your company (or a friend’s) be the first sponsor – others will be more willing to follow.
3. Chunk (or Microchunk) your sponsorships. Break your budget items into manageable chunks that companies can “adopt”. For example, let one company pay for the lunch, and another for shirts, etc. Chunking is nice because it means the companies can write checks directly to the vendors, and you never have to touch any cash. This limits your personal liability and makes companies feel safer.
4. Let others help you (find sponsorships). In attempts to raise sponsorship funds, I cold-emailed a decent number of RDU-area companies. With the exception of one, none of these companies emailed me back. Almost all of the sponsors found me through their employee’s word-of-mouth. I found that keeping the wiki, blog and email lists lively, along with a good dose of public pleading brought in the sponsors.
5. Leverage blogs, wikis, mailing lists, event sites, even social networking to promote your camp. At BarCampRDU, the first things we created were a blog and a mailing list. The blog was great because it gave us a venue to publish stuff that wouldn’t have really been great on the wiki (sponsorship announcements, etc). The mailing lists were absolutely key for keeping in touch (I only wish that I had made sure everyone was on the list). They often say it is most difficult to sell stuff that is free – and when you are promoting a BarCamp, make no mistake, you are selling the idea. So use all the tools at your disposal; you can use Upcoming or create a Myspace profile, for instance. We didn’t use Myspace at BarCampRDU, but we did use everything else on this list.
6. Make your sponsors happy. I was really excited when companies wanted to sponsor BarCamp. I knew that their money was going to help make the day fun for everyone (who doesn’t like free food?). So when people came on as sponsors, I would make a nice post on the BarCampRDU blog announcing the sponsorship. A lot of the companies then linked back to that post or used the copy in their sponsorship announcement. Yes, it took a little time writing something nice about a company I didn’t know much about, but it was worth it as it gave the company something to work with.
7. Don’t do it yourself. From very early on, BarCampRDU had an organizing committee. These seven organizers shared the load in executing all of the aspects of BarCampRDU (arranging volunteers, catering, design, etc). Working with people not only makes your job easier, but it gives you a sounding board for ideas, and a doublecheck to make sure you’re not messing up. And when the BarCamp actually happens, we’ll have 7 people who are intimately familiar with all the details of the camp, instead of just one. If you’re going to go to all the work of planning a BarCamp, you want to be able to attend it, not stomp out fires all day.
8. Organize the wiki (on paper). Our wiki got out of hand real fast. Sure, I knew where to find stuff on the wiki, but I bet others were just woefully confused by our page. To combat this, I sat down and planned the wiki out on paper, and then reorganized. The goal of your BarCamp wiki should be to quickly and effectively get people the information they need – a classic UI task. So take some time, plan your wiki out, and make everyone’s life a lot easier.
9. (Maybe) use your own wiki. The pbwiki that BarCamp uses does not support an intelligent locking mechanism. This meant that many of our users had to wait, twiddling their thumbs, for a lock to expire before they could edit the wiki. And many also felt uncomfortable stealing the wiki lock, even though it was allright to do so. A wiki really is a good tool for planning a BarCamp, but a wiki that is a little easier on the users might be a better choice.
10. Have fun. Early in the process I realized that there’s only so much planning you can do for a BarCamp. People need to experience the unconference format to really “get” what you do at one. Not everything will go as planned, of course, but the ecosystem of an event like BarCamp will work those kinks out. This rule holds for the smallest to the largest BarCamps. BarCamp is about teaching, learning, collaboration – but we wouldn’t do any of that if it wasn’t fun. So enjoy yourself, don’t stress too much, and have a great time.

Wondering about size and budget of BarCampRDU? Here’s a rundown by the numbers:

• Idea first proposed: May 25 (total planning time less than 2 months)
• Expected attendees: 175 over two days
• Sponsors: 6, contributing $5200 to pay for food, t-shirts, supplies, refreshments and a pre-party.
• People: 7 organizers, 9 volunteers, 1 venue rep, 1 designer
• Meetings: 2

Tags: barcamprdu, conference

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.