What's Purple and Silver and 363 Days Away?

Submitted by whil on Sun, 10/02/2011 - 3:33pm

You got THAT right! We're talking about BarCampMilwaukee 7.

And we're taking requests.

Reply to this post with things you liked. Things you'd like added. Things you'd like deleted. Things you'd like modified. Things you'd like to help with. I've already started a list:

++ Food was epic. Thanks to Jenn and Jen and the pot luck providers and the late afternoon second soda run AND all those muscular young men who helped haul the Sunday lunch to the second floor. (And many others too numerous to mention.)

++ Bucketworks continues to become more and more like home. Those membership discounts expire today, so re-up now!

-- Name tags with 20% more stickiness. Maybe even 25% more.

-- Registration roster sorted by shoe size, not registration date, because everyone knows their shoe size.

What's YOUR $0.02? We're listening.

 

17 comments

Me thinks, and Coffee

Submitted by cityvitalsigns on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 8:27pm
first time at an "unconference".  Awesome.  Now, totally hate planned conferences.  But I actually didn't get to any sessions - when I left Sat at 12:00, sessions that I was interested in hadn't been posted to the grid, so I assumed they'd be Sunday.  So I went and spent time with family on Saturday; but then checked the session grid from home at 12:30 and saw that the afternoon had filled in.  With sessions I was interested in.  Too late for me. Not sure how an unconfernce style would ever be able to get around that family/conference integration thingy. 
  • I bet Alterra would sponsor coffee.  Sarah Johnson at Alterra is in charge of "giving donations" - Sarah@acmke.com
 

Coffee

Submitted by JenLarkee on Wed, 10/05/2011 - 10:24am
The coffee fail is my bad, I got 2 free pounds of Alterra coffee from my sister but it was whole bean and I didn't have a grinder/dont even know how to brew coffee.  Bucketworks does actually have a nice large coffee maker and caraffe (if it still works, I don't know, I think we might have used it last year), and it could have been used if there had just been much better planning on my part.  I'm writing up a lot of food and beverage notes for next year, and will be including my failings with the coffee and a plan for improvement. 

No Fail

Submitted by raster on Fri, 10/07/2011 - 7:57am

Jen, the fact that you don't even know how to make coffee says to me it was not your fail.

Someone passionate about having coffee should have taken care of it.

And, to be really picky, someone has the title of "Coffee Czar" ;)

 

Here are my thoughts:++

Submitted by chrisjaure on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 9:50am
Here are my thoughts:
  • ++ Barcamp Tour was a nice way to get people with a different area/level of expertise typically found at past Barcamps. Is there something we can start up to make that happen without Barcamp Tour? I know it kind of already happens on its own.
  • ++ All my needs were provided for (food, drink, etc.).
  • -- I heard a complaint about the room labelling not being clear enough.

Colors!

Submitted by raster on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 3:36pm

Would it make sense to color code the spread sheet and match the rooms with big colored signs?

(Or is that a usability issue?)

We could throw in a symbol

Submitted by chrisjaure on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 8:28pm
We could throw in a symbol too. And put all that on the map. I think the signs just needed to stand out a bit more. From what I remember, they kind of blended in with the other papers posted by them.

Win!

Submitted by bertramt on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 9:21am
  • Barcamp was a huge win! I was very happy with how the weekend went. I would like to thank Bucketworks for opening up for Friday night campers, this really helps for people coming from further away to participate in the full event. The people, the sessions and the food were great! Having the ongoing things like soldering, 3d printing, and lock picking are great things to fill in the day and meet people. I also was very happy with the food there was enough food, and it was great. The leftover pizza at 2 or 3 in the morning was a also great planning! (I'm totally sure that was the plan right?)
 
  • I may suggest that we work at getting an ssl cert for the barcamp website, maybe that dc414 folks want to help make that happen? Along with the website, maybe we can have a check in computer or two connected to the website rather than the paper. Maybe we could also hook the process into a label printer with 26% more stickiness! I know the paper process works and is fairly simple, just might be nice to further leverage the website and the data to improve barcamp. I am very happy overall with the website, and we should stick with it and keep improving it.
 
  • I liked the online schedule, maybe along with the shortened url, we could print some sheets with qrcodes so people and easily get to the doc on their phones.
 
  • One more thing that might not hurt is investing in labeled trash and recycling bins.
 
  • BarCamp Milwaukee 6 was a huge success, and I can't wait for next year! Thank you to all that made it happen!

Ill see what i can pull :P.

Submitted by dw5304 on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 1:35am
Ill see what i can pull :P. might be able to get them a cheap ssl cert but i will need a csr for this to be finnished.

Computers!

Submitted by raster on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 3:45pm
Tim, please bring some computers, and we can use them as registration stations.... We actually did this for the first PhotoCamp and it was quite helpful. We just need someone to make it happen.

Wrangle Sponsors and Other Stuff

Submitted by raster on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 9:41pm

Find someone besides Pete to try to wrangle up all the sponsors. Find some new sponsors. Tell Pete to relax, and that BarCamp really is (in some ways) mostly self-organizing once it's actually happening.

Session Board

Submitted by raster on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 9:38pm

We could probably provide a few computers around the space for viewing editing the schedule. We've always done a paper schedule because we didn't want to make it hard for people who didn't have laptops, but maybe it's time to switch (since we did.)

And yes, I ran out of time, but if there's a Python hacker around, we can set up the MadCamp Notifier to automagically tell you about the sessions that are happening.

 

I think switching to Google

Submitted by chrisjaure on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 8:08am
I think switching to Google Docs for the schedule did lead to a bit of confusion for people who weren't there at 10:00 on Saturday and were used to the paper schedule. The URL wasn't posted in a clear location.

One Complaint

Submitted by Clint326 on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 8:13pm
I did not like the fact that I could not crack the giant safe.

Nor did we, Clint, nor did

Submitted by whil on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 8:19am
Nor did we, Clint, nor did we.

++food was fantastic!++venue

Submitted by jkerman on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 12:55pm
  • ++food was fantastic!
  • ++venue could not have been more perfect
  • ++overnight camping! campbarcamp was /so/ win
  • ++online instant schedule
  • ++permanant soldering class/3d printing area
  • ++field trip to the MKE makerspace
  •  
  • I would love to see a schedule grid on the 2nd floor somewhere. or perhaps on the plethora of random tv's around the space.  I know pete was already looking into the SMS broadcast system that madcamp used a little bit. that would be /excellent/
More coffee would have been great too. if you need a coffee sponsor next year, let me know! (may i suggest some sort of tanker truck we can park outside all weekend?)    

Here are some of my

Submitted by Arqueete on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 10:47am
Here are some of my feelings:
  • If I recall correctly, last year the rooms were numbered. It was nice that they were identified by name this time as it was easy to remember which was which.
  • Food was awesome. Thank you food people.
  • On one hand, I loved that schedules were online, since we could check it from anywhere in the building, etc. However, it is a little annoying when you don't have a web-enabled device with you and need to edit one. Can we improve that somehow?

Session board

Submitted by JenLarkee on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 11:47am
While the new online session board was neat-o, it did have some drawbacks, namely that it was hard to see what was going on without a laptop or smartphone handy.  I found myself often asking nearby campers if they knew what the next hours sessions were, when in years past I'd just run downstairs and look at the board.  Also, a lot of people mentioned issues with their sessions being deleted and other sessions put in their place. 
Drupal theme by Kiwi Themes.