Talk:FirstAnnualConferencePlanning
Hi, I got some comments/idea's for the conference:
on food: make sure there is plenty of space to sit at, a walking lunch/dinner does not work. People got enough stuff to hold (conference materials, goodies, etc) Also, make sure it's good food, with choices for the allergic, dieting crowd (you got a lot of those in CA :) ) etc.
on goodies (or schwag) include a bag. It does not have to be a full-out backpack, but bags are good for putting the other schwag as wel as the conf materials in, plastic or paper (earth friendly though!) at least. Pens are also a cheap but strong tool for marketing. Pens are easily loaned to someone, so if there's message with a link on a pen, it will be noticed. Stickers/bumperstickers are a good idea. As I think there may be quite some press, models (to build your own, I assume?) are great. Most people have kids and will be very temped to bring one home for daughter/son. Also, but that may be pushing the budget.. bottled water with logo and tins with mints. The tiny tins that fit in a pocket easily. Very handy to have if you just had lunch and now want to mingle. :)
On the schedule: An hour is quite short for a workshop and it's only one day, so in picking topics, make sure that the topic can be handled well in an hour.
I would suggest starting Friday just a bit later, as experience tells that traffice will cause people to be late and using Saturday morning for a water-filled event. Guess a bit like this: Friday 8am - 9.00am. Morning snacks/breakfast and registration 9:00am - 9:30am. Opening Talk (Patri. Outline goals, progress, initiatives, challenges) 9:30am - 10:30am. Morning workshop #1 10:30am - 10:45am. Morning break. 10:45am - 11:45am. Morning workshop #2 11:45am - 12:15pm. Summaries of morning workshops. 12:15pm - 1:30pm. Lunch (possibly a talk). (I think this should be more than enough time for lunch, unless you expect over 300 people) 1:30pm - 2:30pm. Afternoon workshop #1 2:30pm - 3.30pm Afternoon workshop #2 3.30 - 4.pm. Afternoon break / mingling 4pm - 5pm. Afternoon workshop #3. 5pm - 6 pm summaries of afternoon workshops 6pm - 7pm. Break 7pm - 9pm. Dinner. (? Can we make it longer ? Yes, dinner will take about two hours anyways.) 9pm - 11pm. Drinks & Mingling. *you will have to put an ending time here, to prevent abuse and to keep food&beverage costs as manageble as possible. Saturday Cool water event!
On press: make sure you decide how many and from which type of paper/magazine you would like press and work with press-badges, so that you know who is press and where to expect articles to be printed. Hire your own photographer to make pictures for marketing purposes.
ok that's my 50 cents for now, if anything pops up, I'll come edit.
Alexis' thoughts
The thing that is likely to be the biggest pain in the ass is getting a venue. After that, there will need to be decisions about format -- sounds like you all are for a loose format with short speaking times-- which, at least according to "presentation zen" is ideal for attention spans during a long day of conferences. What we did at BIL and will do more of next year is have more break outs. I.e. after certain speakers, have a 1/2 hour break out session with them in a smaller room, while other talks continued in the main room. It also sounds like you may want some of the self- scheduling involved in BIL -- which basically involves a white board and some markers and some early birds!
Other aspects of BIL to consider-- if we had sound, lights or projectors, food, water, booze, it is because someone brought it or a company sponsored it-- do you want to re-create that aspect of it as well, or do you want someone to coordinate those aspects? These are things I can help with/do.
What I'm kind of envisioning is a "seamless" running background-- like all of the stuff necessary/and or you want to run the conference gets taken care of by your Org.-- audio, sound, lighting, projectors/screens, recording, food, name tags, white boards, venue, are taken care of by you guys. And the Bil/unconference aspect comes in during the 15 minute talks-- people self organize in that they choose to talk about whatever they want for 15 minutes, with the option of a break out room for an additional half hour talk (may be good to have 2 -3 rooms), they also choose when they speak between certain times on a first come first serve basis. And also have a WIKI for speakers and attendees to see who each other are and get a sense for that-- you can see some of that at www.bilconference.com
I think one of the things that really helped was having the meet and greet at a bar the night before.
I would consider figuring out a polite way to give speakers presentation zen before they speak/present.
Tyler Emerson is another good person to talk to about conferences.
Starting face book group for seasteading people to get to know each other pre-conference could be helpful, and getting a twitter aggregator to include all things tagged with seasteading.
-- Alexis also says: You mentioned bags up above, what about the gorcery bags, not the brown paper ones, but ones that allow you to use one less bag, with seasteading links and logo-- you accomplish 1) reducing the amoung of plastic or paper bags used, 2) get more advertising and 3) the canvas style bags are usually less expensive to have made than back packs or messenger bags. a couple of links to look at bags: (not canvas) http://www.reusethisbag.com/custom.asp?=Go+Green+Ban+Plastic+Bags! (jute or canvas) http://www.4imprint.com/products/boutiquestore.aspx?CSID=713&fs=LowestSellPrice&csd=t&page=1&ss=grocery&mkid=1_bags_groceryTE&s_kwcid=canvas%20grocery%20bags%7C1524681452&gclid=CMSwsr-tiZUCFR4sagodADPHqQ
-- Other thoughts from Alexis: --get a press release on the Seasteading website about the conference. --Also have an "In the Media" page wwith two sections, one with links to articles that are about you in the press and one with links to (positive) things about seasteading or seasteading type things like makign warships into living places (http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/08/reactivate-part-2.php) --Set up a list of the things you need to get done, rather than a paragraph because they are easier to read --
