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BarCampChennaiIdeas

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 11 months ago

Ideas for BarCampChennai

 

This is the place where you can chip in with ideas to make BarCampChennai a success. Ideas can be big or small. What's important is that you share it here. Do remember to write your name and email id.

 

  • A PostMortem page can be created for folks to add in their opinions and views after they have attended this event. A sort of like feedback. oh! talking of feedback, a survey on SurveyMonkey would greatly help just like how BarCampDelhi guys have done. - Ramesh

 

 

  • Set up a Google Groups for organizers. This will help in better communication and coordination. - Patrik Kumar

 

  • What about folks who come in from Bangalore, hyd, bombay, Delhi for the event? Should arrange accomodation facilities.

 

  • Study postmortems of other barcamps. We can learn a lot from other organizers.

 

  • How about endless coffee at the venue? It'll be needed when folks will have to be lisening to lots of sessions.

 

  • Networking is as much important as listening to presentations. So please give enough time for socializing and don't cram too many sessions. People need to rest their brains, enjoy their food and mingle with the people there.

 

  • Have a time keeper volunteer to remind speakers of their time limits.

 

  • Should we charge a door charge? or offer it for free?

 

  • Organize a white board for scribbling for the presenters

 

  • The 5 tag introduction. Neat idea for introducing.

 

  • Parallel sessions or a single session? Now that its two days! More time. What say?

 

 

 

  • How about invloving kids. A lot of techie kids are around in Chennai.

 

  • Spread the word to the user groups. A great idea to pass the word around to the tech community

 

 

 

 

  • Take a look at photos of other barcamps

 

  • Do a fun video of the event. show it around the end of the show. this will be carrot for folks to stay on till the end. Any volunteers for this?

 

  • Organizing Tip : remember, to keep it as loose as possible. let people take care of things. don't make it too organized. Give more power to the people

 

 

  • How about Souvenirs? Maybe a potluck style souvenirs will fit the event - everyone brings some souvenir and exchanges them with others around.

 

  • Talking of potluck how about potluck of desserts. Suggesting people to come walk in with a pack of sweets/pastry/home made item will be lot of fun.

 

  • Give link to tutorial on WiKi editing

 

 

  • Give a route map to the event once the venue has been finalized

 

 

  • Warn people if shoes have to be removed in advance.

 

  • Create a news section which will be a sort of blog (behind the scenes)

 

  • If people from different place in India come and accomodation is arranged little far from venue what about transportation.

 

  • Nescafe & Lipton can be asked to sponsor coffee/tea/milk

 

  • Kingfisher can be asked to sponsor water

 

  • Short quizzes can be conducted as ice breaker sessions (of course with small gifts for winners)

 

 

List of Help Committees.

 

  1. Stage Preparation
  2. Front Desk Registration
  3. Videographing the event
  4. Live Blogging
  5. Food Committee
  6. Budget and Expenses committee
  7. Invitation Committee
  8. Design Committee
  9. EmCees
  10. Publicity Committee
  11. Speaker Coordination
  12. Accomodation Committee

 

Anymore committees to be added? Please go ahead and add them to the above list.

 

 

List of miscellaneous things that will be needed

 

  1. Chart paper. Lots of them.
  2. Cellophane tape (something that does not spoil the walls)
  3. Lots of water for the participants
  4. Direction to the venue. A map would be useful
  5. Recording equipments for podcasters
  6. Lots of batteries. You never know when you need them.
  7. Battery chargers
  8. Cellphone chargers
  9. Mosquito coils for folks staying overnight
  10. Extension cords in case there are few plug points and many laptops around

 

Anything more fellas that we need to arrange for? Add them up.

 

- Finalize on the outline of the event

 

- Prioritize on the list of the things that need to done

- Create a list of participants for the event

- RSVP - one click confirmation

 

- Setup a meeting with other key members to finalize on the venue - 19th March

 

- Search for meetup / user groups in Chennai/Bangalore/Hyderabad and see if there are people with common interest

- Search for technical/blogging community

- Put down the list of top 5 colleges in Chennai to put up posters in

- Create a prospective sponsors list

- Wifi - Tata Indicom / Sify / Dishnet

- Meals - Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner

- Create buddy system for accomodation

- T-shirts / giveaways

 

- Talk to IIT about backup guest rooms

- list of recommended hotels nearby with contact information

 

- Remind people to bring their essentials - business cards, laptop & phone chargers

 

:: Accessories ::

- Extension cords

- Projectors

- whiteboards / markers / erasers

- chart papers

- pin ups

- transparent tape

- permanent markers

- crosswire cables (for internet sharing for folks without wifi)

- pens & pencils (erasers)

- mint

- provision for drinking water

-

:: Cost Estimation ::

 

- Make a rough estimate of the cost and how much we need

- estimation per need - food / t-shirts etc

- Talk to caterers for rough pricing

 

:: Come up with an amount for each sponsor ::

- Infosys

- Satyam

- Wipro

- TCS

- Cognizant

- Inautix

- HCL

- Sify

- Yahoo

- Google

- Small companies coming out strong.

 

:: Posters ::

- Need directions on them

 

:: Records ::

- Every session needs to be videotaped

- Create transcripts of every session

 

:: Open Discussion ::

- Pick a topic and with a moderator discuss and brainstorm the technology

- eg: digital security

- Open Debate : pick a controversial topic and on the fly voting, split the group into two and debate it out.

 

:: Behind the scene documentation ::

- take pictures and notes of discussions before the event and keep updating the wiki to give them the sense of momentum

 

:: Individual Profiling ::

- ask people to put a short profile of themselves while registering on the wiki

 

:: breakout sessions ::

have timeslots between presentations so that we can get likeminded people together

 

 

Improving organizing efficiency

 

How to get more folks involved in the organizing of the event

 

List down the most important tasks that need to done. List down the people that we know personally who would be interested in helping out. Match the interest levels and send out a request to them to help out with the work. Almost everyone wants to help but would like to know what’s important that needs to be done.

 

For example, for getting the press releases sent to the right persons, send a request to journalists that we know personally and asking them for the contact persons in different media agencies. In most cases, people are forthcoming to help out. Especially since this is a no-profit initiative.

 

Make a post on our individual blogs that calls in for folks to take up a little work on their own. List down the tasks that need to be taken up.

 

Reach out to people who have registered for the event in the Wiki and ask them if they can help out with a certain task.

 

Call for an organizers dinner and invite all the organizers to come and introduce each other. This will create a sort of camaraderie. There’s this feeling of a group initiative.

 

Send an email to bloggers and ask them to passionately spread the word around and to encourage folks to come out and help.

 

Jot down the names and the responsibilities that a person has taken up on the Wiki so that its for everyone to see. This way, we can avoid duplicating the effort to do a particular work.

 

 

Things to do to quickly finalize on the Venue

 

Mail Rajesh and ask him to put a word to Dr.Ashok Jhunjunwala.

Call Gaurav and ask him to put a word to Dr.Ashok Jhunjunwala

Fix a meeting with Dr.Ashok and personally request him to let us use the IITm venue.

 

Set up a meeting with Dr.T.V.Gopal to see if we can use any venue in Anna University. The computer science lab can also be a venue for the event.

 

 

How to quickly spread the word around about BarCampChennai

 

Create a short announcement email format and add that to the email being sent to bloggers. Ask them to post that in their blogs and send that across to their techie friends.

 

Send press release to all journos.

 

Send email to special folks asking them to publish info about the event.

• Rajesh Jain

ContentSutra

 

List down the list of tech bloggers and send a request to them to post it on their blog

• Sadagopan

• Codey

 

List down the list of yahoo groups and google groups and shoot them an email. The more the emails, the better is the spread of words.

 

Send an email to the blank noise project participants and request them to make a post about the event. Ask them to add their blog link to the page or we can add it for them. Make sure to give a link to the logos page.

 

Send an email to bloggers in Chennai and ask them to passionately spread the word around and to encourage folks to come out and help. There is a certain pride that people have for their city.

 

Design a good poster and put them up in Tidel Park and Elnet park.

 

Ask techie friends to forward the mail on BarCampChennai to all the developers inside their company. Create a format and mail it to them.

• Ravi : Quintegra

• Suren : Ness Technologies

• Giri : Brooks

• Swami : iSoft plc

• Nagaraj : AOL

• Suman : Dell

• Anita Bora : Infosys

• Bharath : iGate

• Ganapathy : Satyam

• Somu : Sify

• David Appasamy : Sify

• Hitesh Mehta : ClickJobs.com BharatMatrimony

 

 

Random things to do

  • Take photos of the venue and put it up on the wiki.
  • Meet up with Dr.Gopal from Anna Univ and invite him to the event
  • Create an organizers google groups
  • Packed lunch is better. Less messy and easy to handle.
  • Can we have a few handout mikes arranged? Do we need them?
  • Plan up a nice ice breaker session
  • Make up a small presentation to tell folks the rough rules we play by. Make it really cool.
  • I should jot down the interesting experiences that I face in the run up to the event and at the event. This will make for very interesting reading for folks who want to organize future barcamps.
  • Get personal visiting cards printed.
  • Get an extra set of official business cards printed
  • Mail all those registered to enter their designation, company name, email id and phone number. If possible, even their photographs.
  • Buy a cool sandals and shorts, a nice tshirt
  • Figure out a way to get women participation
  • In the tipsforpresenters page , specifically write tips for first time presenters

 

 

The Day before the event

 

  • Set up projectors.
  • Put up a big banner on the entrance that says ‘Welcome BarCampers
  • Make vijay give a letter at the security telling them to let the folks inside.
  • Send the map to the venue and directions to everyone.
  • Put up some nice hand written instructions for the barcampers
  • Put up the big chart papers up where folks can mark their events
  • Figure out where the registration desk will be placed.

 

 

On the Day of the Event

Before the show begins.

 

  • Remind the organizers to come atleast one hour before the start of the event. Arrange for special breakfast for the organizers.

 

  • Set up the registration desk.

 

  • What details do we want to ask at the registration desk.

 

  • Make a chartpaper which has the main organizers’ phone numbers written along with dress description. It’ll easily help folks who need help contact you.

 

  • Make sure to start the event on time. It’s important to send a messag that while its unstructured. It is definitely professionally organized.

 

 

What to say at the start

 

  • All participants must make a presentation. Remind them to go to the offline wiki and put their presentation on the slots. We should make an arrangement that makes it easy for folks to reshuffle the presentations

 

  • Law of two feet

 

  • Remind all photographers and bloggers to tag it as barcampchennai. This will be a single point repository of all photos.

 

  • Tell folks that they can set up their own venue and hold their own meetings

 

  • Encourage folks to meet up each other, to introduce one another and break the ice.

 

  • If you want anything, just get it organized. A sort of wiki or a buffet menu.