JavaSpecialistsSymposium2011:Organization/Learning

This event has been a great learning experience. In general, it is never possible to do everything perfectly, but these reminders are useful for those doing their best.

Timing and Sessions

 * More time for the first orientation and planning session (c. 2 hours for this conference)
 * Ensure there is a reasonable "morning circle" at the start of each day (i.e. from 2nd day: 15-30 minutes)
 * To connect, set the tone and remind the participants how we want to be together this day + announcements etc.

Materials

 * Specify the size of the postits (c. post-card size, at least)

Convenor Responsibilities Posters
Something like:

N.B. One or more of these should be clearly visible in each break-out room (i.e. so that it cannot be missed by convenors of sessions in those rooms/spaces).

Process
For this group at this conference and as it turned out (a community of interest without a strategic outputs-driven agenda, 40 diverse people proposing a wide variety of topics and activities, ...):
 * Pre-event
 * Use e-mail more, augmenting the wiki (people my not be watching relevant pages). Copy some of the content (teaser) into the e-mail.
 * In addition to (e.g. identi.ca, ...): Atom, RSS, ...
 * Event preparation (building the wall, room layout, etc.)
 * Ensure all this is done the previous day (not the morning of the event)
 * Catalysts/facilitators should arrive at least two days before the event if possible.
 * Ensure the first facilitators meeting happens on the previous day if not before
 * discuss the Organisation
 * Let the catalyst most knowledgeable about the domain do a rough clustering of topics as they are proposed and posted onto the launchpad.
 * Consider (e.g.) a grid with 3 rows (broad kite-level topics, sea level topics and fish level topics) and two venue-related columns (coding activity, discussion activity).
 * When all the post-its are up, bounce this clustering off the participants
 * Let them refine (or completely restructure) it
 * Then, work on one cluster at a time. For example:
 * Sort out the team dynamics, management and productivity cluster (in discussion rooms)
 * Sort out the concurrency cluster (broad discussion preceding coding sessions)
 * etc.
 * Convenors (and all) watch for clashes.
 * When the next session is about to begin, especially on the first day, have all participants come to the main plenary room and follow the convenor with a poster (A4) to the venue of their selected session.
 * Consider making laminated posters each with one of the venue names on it (in a corner) - (erasable) topics and convenor names will be written on these with whiteboard markers for the next session (make 2 sets in case one is left behind in between sessions).
 * At the end of each day, during checkout, have the next day's conveners eye-ball the space-time matrix and make any necessary adjustments.

Disorganisers

 * Essential to have some in touch with a good cross-section of the participants to be in a position to pick up on any issues which need attention.

Excursions

 * The excursions wiki page was hardly used. Next time, try using a (daily) space-time matrix for excursions.