How To Plan A Code4LibCon

Apply to be a host
Get approved by the community
Find a hotel, negotiate and sign a contract with them
Invite the community to help with
Have a timeline

Important Public Resources

Past calls for host sites: 2010 -
Code4Lib listserv
Code4LibCon listserv
Sponsorship info (public)

Important Private Resources

Code4LibCon-hostsite listserv
Budgets from previous years
Sponsorship info (private)

Shortly before the Conference

=== Keynotes

Contact speakers in advance to ask if they need anything, arrange airport pickup, etc

Freenode IRC connection

Historically, conference attendees have had trouble maintaining persistent connections to the #code4lib IRC channel. We'd always assumed we were overwhelming the conference facility's Internet connection, but we were actually running into Freenode's IP-based connection limits. Freenode is supportive of the IRC-as-backchannel model, however, and they're happy to work with organizers to raise the connection limit.

Contact the conference facility in advance and see if you can find out what your public IP address range will be during the conference. (If it starts with 10.*, 192.168.*, or 172.16.*, ask again -- those are "private" IP ranges used for connection sharing.)

Once you have the IP address or range, send an email to ilines@freenode.net containing a request to raise the connection limit. Include conference info, IP range(s), and the expected number of connections. For example:

To: ilines@freenode.net

Hello,

I'm helping plan the code4lib 2010 conference, taking place in Asheville, NC next week. 
Since our backchannel runs through #code4lib on Freenode, we're trying to plan ahead 
to avoid running up against the connection limit. Would it be possible to raise the cap 
for us during the conference? Details follow.

Conference: code4lib 2010 < http://code4lib.org/conference/2010/ >
Dates: February 22-26, 2010
Attendees: 250
Location: Renaissance Asheville Hotel, Asheville, NC
IP Ranges: 12.21.216.106 and the entire 12.21.217.0/24 block

We encourage in-channel participation, so we expect a high percentage of attendees to 
be connected at once. We'll also have two or three channel bots connected from the 
conference for the lobby monitors.

Please let me know if you need any further information, and thanks very much for 
your help!

Michael

I received an automated reply with a ticket number almost instantly, but didn't hear back after that. I sent a quick followup early on the morning of the 22nd, and received a response (from a human) letting me know that it had been taken care of.

Additional support is available from the helpful volunteer Freenode staff in the #freenode channel.

At the Conference

Keynotes

Water at the podium
Speaker gifts
Dinner plans

Timers

Sit in the front of the room
Have several people
You may want to use an extra machine
Here's what some of the software looks like: http://www.flickr.com/photos/schwartzray/4393891356/ (ask Ed Corrado for details)
Dan Chudnov says the best free timer app for OSX is http://www.apimac.com/timer/

Flipcharts

Flipcharts can be useful, but it's important to decide what to put on the wiki/website and what to put on a flipchart: image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/schwartzray/4392998501/

Suggested Timeline

See C4L2010planning for an example