Yesterday, I wrote about my experience with WordCamp 2009 Dallas, an WordPress Camp / unconference for bloggers and WordPress enthusiasts. Today, here are some of my tips for those organizing an unconference or BarCamp from my years of experience planning events and meetings.
1. Connect with a meeting and event professional in your community.
Before you start your event planning, check to see if you have any meeting or event professionals in your community that understand, use and integrate Web 2.0 in their events. There are many meeting and event professionals bloggers , a vibrant group of #eventprofs in Twitter as well as two large Linkedin Groups (Event Planning & Management and Event Peeps) that understand the planning process and people dynamics of a Web 2.0 integrated face-to-face event. Contact them. They can help you with some of your venue and planning logistics.
2. Identify the top three-five goals of your event.
Why are you holding this event? What is your real motivation? What do you want people to remember about your event? What do you want them to experience? How many people do you want to attend? What overall average score do you want from your attendees evaluations? What underlying theme, if any, do you have?
3. Location, location, location!
If you plan to make this a destination event (people traveling to it by car or plane), secure a place close to a major airport hub and transportation arteries when possible. Nearby hotels and entertainment districts are also great draws.
4. Focus on the content you want to cover first, and then find the speakers to meet that content.
This is so critical! Put an emphasis on the strategic and education design of your event, with the goals in mind. Then let the logistics add the framework to your strategy.
5. As you plan your schedule, include some adult white space for attendees to digest information, network and learn from others.
Just as in Twitter, it’s not about how many followers you have, conference planning is not about how many speakers you can cram into a day. It’s about the quality of your speaker’s presentations and the quality of the connections one can make. Don’t become the kitchen sink of conferences trying to cover as many topics as possible in a short amount of time. It’s called the “social” web for a reason and today’s learning is social as well, not passive learning from a hierarchy of expertise.
6. Once you have 50 or more attendees, it’s time to start thinking about adding some concurrent breakouts.
Don’t get mesmerized by single track versus dual tracks. Do both. Have a mix of general sessions for everyone with breakouts for niche groups. If the topic does not meet the needs of 70%-80% of your entire attendance, consider making it a separate breakout. You’re doing your attendees a disservice when you try to force a niche topic on all attendees. Remember, the event is about the attendees, not your personal choices.
7) Breakouts are not hard to organize and allow attendees a choice in their learning, which is critical to adults learning.
Having at least two concurrent sessions, allows planners to offer beginner and advance courses for attendees, or audience specific tracks based on an attendee’s needs. Don’t focus on the fact that you’ll need more equipment to live-stream two concurrent sessions. If you only have equipment to live-stream one session, then don’t worry about capturing the other one.
8. Unconference organizers should remember that people today are learning in new ways that are collective, egalitarian and participatory.
The best conference learning occurs when there are varieties of ways people can learn from passive listening to collaborative round-table discussions to small group exercise. Retention and learning decreases the more attendees sit and passively listen, especially for eight-to-ten hours a day.
9. Consider identifying sessions based on levels of experience from beginner, intermediate to advanced.
This will help attendees and potential attendees when arranging their schedules.
10. Find some champions to follow the Twitter stream and engage virtual attendees.
If you’re going to integrate Web 2.0 Technologies, be prepare to attract a following and new virtual attendee needs will arise.
11. Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate
I strongly encourage you to consider use a speaker’s evaluation for each speaker and an overall conference evaluation. These should be more than a smile sheet and ask a variety of questions. Rank all the speakers on their overall favorable average and compare. This will help you for future planning.
More thoughts about single versus mutiple trackes.
While trying to have a single-experience for the entire audience is admirable, it is not possible. Nor does it really happen. Everyone brings their own set of learnings, skills and perspectives to an event. Each person leaves with their own takeaways and views. The Internet has turned learning on its head and no one person enters, follows or leaves the social space in a same way. Go ahead and consider a mix of single and dual tracks. Yes, your attendees will complain they have to make a choice and this is no different than entering the Web. They have to make a choice where they’re going to go and what they’re going to experience. If you only provide a single track experience, you’re going to have complaints from audience to provide multiple tracks.
I know there are many more tips. What are yours? Add them to the comments section.
I look forward to seeing how your advice might shift after your experience organizing #EC10