Barcamp Notes

Building Barcamp

http://s.barcampphilly.org/presentations/804

  • Speaker:Your Organizers!
  • Contact Info: @barcampphilly
  • Description: Come chat with us about what goes into building an unconference like BarCamp: What #?, What Time? How many $$
  • Format: Discussion
  • Room: F70
  • Time: 2014-11-15 12:15 PM

Basics

  • Need a board!
  • Chain of people interested in volunteering
  • Reach out to folks
  • It's not magic
  • Can happen anytime anyone can put in the effort to do it

Team

  • Head
  • Designer
    • "OCD Person"
    • Every year the brand evolves
  • Finance
    • Badge, food, parties for only $10-15!
    • Made possibly by sponsor outreach
  • Twitter! Twitter! Social Media People!

  • Brininging people onto the team

  • Trust and responsibility
  • Not a ton of oversight
  • No one's job

Advice

  • Start early as a learning experience
  • Start earlier
    • Ticket sales
    • BC won't sell out until 8am the day before the event

Size

  • First year: 160
  • This year: 500

  • No minimum for a successful event

    • Depends on what you set out to do
      • BC wants board to be full
  • 20 people may be enough
  • Barcamp is a scalable model
  • There is no "right" Barcamp

Model

  • TL;DR: Started with O'Riley
    • FooCamp
      • Foo = Bar software reference
    • Expensive
    • Very very cureated
    • Nice to have
    • The heck with O'Riley, we'll start our own
    • Hard to attend
  • Forked to Barcamp
    • Anyone can attend
    • Started with no advance ticket sales
    • Of the people, for the people
    • No tracks
    • No recruitment
    • Board notion
    • No one needs to ask for permission for the BarCamp trademark
    • Vote with your feet
  • Philly is one of the bigger ones
    • Money is charged
      • Guilt for paying but not showing up
      • Didn't want to plan for 500 but only 300 showed up
      • Sessions that promote products are discourged (but not banned)
    • Theme is centered around the people who showed up
      • It is an "anything you want to do" conference
      • Feedback loop based on people who show up
      • Trended in one way, encourages people to branched out
  • BarCamp is subset of Unconference format

Logistics

  • Start early
  • Donated spaces
    • IT department pays for security, housecleaning, chairs moved
  • Food
    • Look at how many tickets have been sold for estimates
    • Caterers
    • BACON
    • Planned 2 weeks in advanced

Venue

  • Logistics are weeks in advance
  • Chaos can still make it work (staircases)
  • Value is all in brininging community & energy to one place
  • Not like you come to Warton any have them say "ABSOLUTELY"
  • Example: come up to Coworking space

Spread the Word

  • Make friends
  • Spread the word
    • Start spreading the word about what you want to see
  • Encourage others
  • 1600 person email blast
  • How to give a talk as a first timer

Sponsorship

  • $15,800 2013 budget
    • 5% signed off to external tax company
      • $500-600 went away
  • $18,000 2014 budget
    • $600 in bacon
    • $13,000 in sponsorship
      • For food, shirts,
    • Insurance is provided by space
    • Taxes is paid with anything asociated with event
    • Created an LLC to handle its own tax
  • Don't stress money
    • Money is NOT the object
    • You could charge a high fee or find sponsorships
    • Kickstarting? Why not!