February 10, 2006

Northern Voice - Moosecamp

I'm taking part in a collaborative meeting idea called Moosecamp, an event supporting the Northern Voice conference in my home town of Vancouver.

I am part of a educational blogging initiative where I work, and there are a number of sessions that are of interest to me. So far it's been fun, but I have a couple of suggestions:
  • Internet Access: If you are having a conference on blogs, make some terminals available. If there are some available here, they are not identified - at all. How hard would it be to have a few computers with a sign that allow attendees to connect to the net?
  • Power Access: For those of us who can bring our notebooks along (if we want to blog using a computer and not a phone, PDA or watch), make power easily accessible. Meetings are funny as the people with laptops migrate toward the walls where power is available. As the day is going on and batteries are getting low, more people are tethered. Have some extension cords taped to the ground and let people know they are there.
  • Session Length: Make sessions longer! The whole purpose of Moosecamp is to collaborate in person. With the number of people in some of these sessions, you simply have little or no time to put forward your idea(s) before the session is over.
  • Session Updates: Updated, subscribable schedule. It strikes me as humourously ironic that a large number of bloggers and technology types come together for a series of sessions on tools that allow for world-wide collaboration, but the schedule is scribbled on small scraps of paper with a Sharpie and tacked up to a cork-board. Come ON people! The original grid was posted on the Moosecamp site, but it wasn't kept up to date, and the schedule has changed drastically since arriving this morning. The grid page itself even says:
    THIS SCHEDULE IS NOW OUT OF DATE.
    The master paper schedule onsite is the only accurate one.


Still, I am enjoying the ideas and conversation. I'm already looking forward to what Moosecamp has in store for next year.

5 Comments:

Darren said...

Thanks for the suggestions, and glad you're having fun. These are all good suggestions (with the exception of terminals--I've never seen those at the conference). In truth, the conference costs $50 for two days. We can't necessarily meet the same levels of sophistication that your average conference offers.

As for session length, as you could see by the grid, they slots were in high demand. For a self-organizing conference, our experience has been that shorter sessions are better. Plus, most of the good stuff happens with the connections you make in the common area.

Have you been to a self-organizing conference before? The manual grid superseding the online grid is the standard model. You'll find it at the original--Foo Camp, as well as the more recent Bar Camp. The whole point is that the paper grid is the only authoratative one.

1:58 PM  
Alistair said...

Thanks for the feedback... this is the kind of speed that makes blogging and collaborative software fun. As to your comment:

I am not sure what you mean about terminals at a conference. Do you mean you have never seen terminals at a conference? I can't count the number of conferences where there have been public terminals. Or did you mean you have never seen them at this conference? Either way, it would be nice to have internet access terminals for people.

If I am in the minority about session length, I would be amazed. In every single session I have attended today, the end came when the speaker or group was only part way through their ideas and the discussion had only begun. How do you develop those ideas when the next session starts in 1 - 2 minutes (because you have gone over on your previous one).

Suggestion: More rooms for meetings. That way sessions can go overtime if people are interested.

Never been to a self-organizing conference before, but just because paper scheduels are the standard model, does that mean we have to do it that way forever? Is there an embargo on innovation?

2:07 PM  
Darren said...

I meant I've never seen terminals at conferences. Mind you, I've only attended technology or marketing events (or somewhere in between). Like I say, the conference is low-budget, so in order to have more rooms, terminals, etc, we'd have to charge more money. So, more frills = less accessability.

If we have more rooms, we have more streams. Then (and this has been feedback I've received before) people complain that they can't see the sessions they want. So, three streams and half-hour sessions are our best compromise. If you look at tomorrow's more conventional schedule, you'll see that the sessions are longer.

Simply put, paper works better for this model. It's simpler, it's centralized, it's painlessly real time and it fosters connection between people looking at it. Any technological solution would likely be more time-intensive and less accessable.

3:17 PM  
XtaG said...

(looking over Alistair's shoulder at his laptop which displays the updated and accurate schedule that is posted on the conference's administration blog) "Wow, thanks for letting me look at that, while we sit here and decide which meeting to scramble to next.. I'm sure glad I don't have to crowd around a tiny piece of paper tacked to a bboard in the lobby... BTW, my name is Christa, what's yours?"

8:27 AM  
thao said...

m

10:59 AM  

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