C4L2010planning: wishlist
Planning for Code4Lib 2010 in Asheville, NC
Critical things that must work
- Internet access (i.e. wifi) with good bandwidth
- Internet access (i.e. wifi) with good bandwidth
- Internet access (i.e. wifi) with good bandwidth
- Food must accommodate special dietary needs
Everything else, including quality of hotel rooms, is secondary.
Internet
- Host local mirror of #code4lib IRC - http://www.tummy.com/Community/Articles/pycon2007-network/
- Rent G3 line for dedicated access for speakers (?)
- Have a contingency aircard so at least speakers can go online (?)
- Hook up to UNCA's Internet connection from the hotel (?)
- bridge server (between outside and local wireless)?
- forwarding server?
- VPN needs to work
- higher ports need to work
- some wired access in room?
Technology (non-internet)
- Multi-platform computer for presenters--mbklein has Mac/Windows, Ubuntu, Ctrl-key to swich beteween them
- One person suggests a google docs acct to pull presentations together (still need them offline and downloadable)
- Encourage those doing demos to do screencast backups
- Post all info in several places. Emailed info needs to be posted to website
Social Activities
- Signup sheet for nightly dinner activities
- pick out, say, 5 restaurants, encourage new attendees to connect
- make reservations!
- code4lib revue?
- Big enough hospitality suite/spare room for evening/break activities
- Provide paper maps for participants, info on places to go
- Game night (esp. board games and games like Werewolf)
- Bess' brother-in-law works at a microbrewery. Possible tour?
Food & Drink
- solicit info about dietary needs
- vegan
- vegetarian
- other needs specified on registration forms
- Requests
- sweet tea
- more beer (code4lib brew for the hospitality suite?)
- more happy hours (possibly a HH before LT?)
- hot breakfast
- candy
- hot soft pretzels & mustard
Sponsorship
- Potential sponsor and contact list
- Conference scholarships
- Consider scholarship for LIS graduate students, CS undergrads
- Andrew Nagy says: vendors want value, something tangible; can hit them up for more $
Choosing speakers
- Ask people to write why they nominated keynote speakers
- Can we get more gender diversity of keynote & 20 minute talks? (Is this important to us?)
- Do we want to limit the number of speakers from any one organization?
- Do we want topic-based categories when voting?
- e.g. 5 high-geekiness talks
- e.g. 5 theory talks
- Voting needs 2 criteria: geekiness and vote preference. (In 2008 the sum of these was the total IIRC)
- Reserve 1-2 spots in 20-minute talks for cutting edge speakers
- How do we ensure we get fresh topics?
- Do we combine pre-voting to avoid duplication?
Attendees
- Who gets to come and how do we decide?
- Some suggestions included: require involvement if not previous attendance
- Some suggestions included: open to previous attendees a day before the main conference
- Some suggestions included: keep it as is
- How do we encourage international participation when we're not in the same town as an international airport?
- Can it be bigger? Do we want it to be?
- Who is the conference for?
- library systems
- software engineers
- programmers
- librarians
- ???
- "This is the only conference for coders"; "Saw no code, so I'm here to give a LT"
- Do-it-yourself crowd
Choosing 2011 venue
- Announce the process early in the conference so that people can get set up with logins
- Reminder during the last day of voting
- Evaluate internet from 2010: do we need to be at a university for internet conference support?
Integration with IRC, twitter stream, and other backstreams
- Is IRC the 'backchannel'? OR is the conference the once-yearly 'frontchannel'?
- Consider suggestions from http://pistachioconsulting.com/twitter-presentations/ regarding integration with backchannel.
- e.g. offer speakers help monitoring the channel ('an ombudsman for the audience')
- Advice from dev8 via BenO:
- @davetaz setup projection/feed of the twittered #dev8d tags + @andymcg set up a netvibe channel to follow the tags elsewhere @jschneider Twitter feed screen in bkgd of these photos: http://is.gd/jOwW http://is.gd/jOxd & see @jvvw review of event: http://is.gd/jOxy
- Make it easier for people to find IRC
- "code4lib station" with signup info and help?
- Not everybody multistreams. Would multiple rooms help (reduce volume)? Or...?
- Publish backchannel, e.g. http://reallywow.com/c4l09/logslice/20090225/14:00-14:20
Openness & transparency, getting to know people
- a code4lib program/conference committee providing support and accumulated wisdom to the organizing committee
- Wordle nametags (popular at dev8. what happens if people don't have blogs/twitterstreams/friendfeed/etc?)
Video
- Sync the timecode in the video with the IRC logs
- 3rd camera for IRC?
Lightning Talks Do's and Don'ts
- Have an MC/cat herder lined up in advance
- Don't have one entity do two LTs back to back
- Ask those who've already spoken to "go last"
- e.g. only present if there's time)-- "share the air"
- Do we need a policy or clarity on expectations? (e.g. no repeats)
- Create a LT do's and dont's page in the conference webspace
- link to existing LT advice
- 2 projectors, minimum. 3 if possible (3rd to display backchannels)
- make transitions to LT during coffeebreak or other downtime
Advice for speakers
- Font up
Breakouts
- Consider setting 2-3 breakouts in advance
- Have 1-2 'unbreakout' sessions
- 11 is too many, IMO
- Trouble when different people are at different levels with a software discussed
- how to know in advance?
- Fedora access controls
List of Interesting things in Asheville, for future reference
see also Google Map, proposal
- The Chocolate Fetish
- Woolworth Gallery (collaborative arts and crafts sale space in an old Woolworth's, with intact, functional lunch bar and a Swedish furniture shop in the basement)