DrupalCampNYC2 was awesome, Thank you to all that showed up and a huge thanks to everyone that presented. This Post-Mortem page gives us all a chance to express what we worked at the camp, what didn't work, what was confusing and what was magnificent.
This page, and others like it, will be used to organize future camps so let everyone know what you thought!
Flickr - http://flickr.com/photos/noneck/tags/drupalcampnyc2/
Groups.Drupal - http://groups.drupal.org/new-york-city
-Great structure for the camp style. Tons of great sessions occurred and I think a lot of people left with new tips and tricks up their sleeve.
-Sunday's PHP 101 session seemed to go very well, Thanks for the applause ;) (-Jacob R)
-Food and Drinks were provided by sponsors which ROCKED!!! Grimaldis Pizza and I didn't have to wait in line for hours in the cold! Schweet!
Definitely do this again but... I like other camp styles where the participants bring food and drinks to share. It really brings a community together as we all sit and chat around the "water cooler" so to speak.
-In regard to the sponsors... We'll help you out by collecting funds before the camp rather than wait until the camp occurred. We know it was confusing for you we we'll fix it in the future (sorry!).
Barnraising
Unfortunately the barnraising didn't turn out so well. The intentions were good but it did not seem to fit inside the style of the camp and the structure seemed to crumble quickly. The idea is great though and I would love to do this again in the future. My suggestions are.
*Pick organization a week or more before the camp
*Create a "lesson plan" so to speak before the camp and use it as example sessions
*Allow the sessions to still be organic (i.e. defined by the participants) but offer the barnraising as the example to use in class
*Host/usernames/passwords/framework should all be defined before the camp and ready to go
Awesome idea and would make for an excellent Drupal bootcamp but can also fit in the barcamp style.
It was a great time to see all sorts of people coming from all over, bringing a wide range of ideas and experience. Thanks to the generosity of the sponsors, the food and happy hour made for a very welcoming and family-like experience.
- I was very encouraged to see a lot of newbies there and I hope they were able to take away valuable experience. It made me think that we should pay more attention to the newbie track beforehand since it takes more work to do the presentations and requires more organization to be effective.
- We should have a running forum before the camp for people to discuss ideas and plan for the sessions before actually getting to the camp. This could work well in the NYC drupal group forum on groups.drupal.org
- I think it is essential to keep the main hang out/food room (215 in this case) as a hang out room the whole time. Informal hanging out is very important to organizing new sessions. Also, that informal meeting space allows for a lot of people to follow up on other discussions. When there was a presentation in 215 on Sunday, there were a lot of people wandering the halls not really knowing where to go.
- We should introduce the whole concept of organizing barcamp-style at the very beginning, especially when there are a lot of people who are new to it. I think most newbies thought that sessions had to be organized by the person who was going to lead them. They can also be organized by anyone who has a specific interest, then they can find people with the knowledge to talk on that specific subject. Or sometimes there isn't even a leader of a session, but instead a bunch of people working on similar stuff who just want to share their experiences.
-Hans
