Introduction

Feel free to add your thoughts, pointers, etc, but try to keep to the same general structure.

If there's a timeline associated with the area you're describing, put that in a ## section at the end of the page.

Committee

This is the organizing committee for the conference. Diffusion of responsibility happens naturally when no one in particular is assigned to a given task.

A couple of roles that need to exist:

• Chair
  • The person making sure everything is proceeding in a timely manner
• Ops
  • Tracking down vendors, placing orders, getting information from people
• Sponsors
  • Let's get that money
• On the ground (OTG)
  • See the venue
  • Recruit local volunteers
  • Find local food recommendations

Program

Having a variety content makes it more likely that someone will find a way to engage. I've found that the following types of content cover most bases:

• Talks
• Workshops
• Lightning talks
• Unconference

The talks and workshops are the content that you'll want to go through a submission process for, the lightning talks and unconference are intentionally unstructured.

Committee

You'll want to put together a committee for putting together the program. An odd number of people is ideal because it allows you to break ties. The first time around we shot for 5 and ended up with 4.

Submissions

For software, just use Sessionize. It was $500 and it was easily worth it. Here's a list of what it provides off the top of my head:

• A portal for speakers to submit talks
• A portal for speakers to create their own profiles
• Auto-generated social banners for marketing purposes
• Built-in submission evaluation features
• A schedule builder
• Group mailing features
• A web app that contains the talk schedule and speaker profiles

It's good to provide a few different sections in the submission form:

• Abstract
  • Pitch the talk to the audience in 500 characters
  • Short, publicly visible
• Description
  • Pitch the talk to the organizers
  • Long, only visible to organizers
• Details
  • Not part of the pitch, just a space to leave any other notes for the organizers

You'll get at least half of your submissions at the last minute. It's also good to solicit submissions from individuals in the community. This can help draw interest, so don't be afraid to reach out.

Evaluation

Give the committee members a couple of weeks to review submissions. A star rating that gets averaged is how we did it last time around, but there may be better ways to do it. It's ideal to do the entire evaluation process blind to avoid bias.

You'll need to decide how many tracks you want. This is based on expected attendance, size of the venue, and the number of exciting submissions.

You'll want to come up with the "first choice" submissions, but also keep a list of "second choice" submissions in case someone drops out, declines, or just never responds. If there are multiple submissions that are highly rated but covering the same topic, you'll need to dedup and just pick one.

One decision you'll have to make is whether to allow product demos as submissions. We didn't have to make this decision the last time around because there were enough highly rated submissions that weren't product demos.

You'll want at least one backup speaker. This job sucks because you have to

• Make a talk you probably won't give
• Pay to attend the conference
• Pay to travel to the conference

Notification

Notify and confirm all the "first choice" submissions. Notify and confirm any "second choice" submissions. In the notification email ask the speakers to keep it quiet until we've confirmed everyone. You don't want someone declining to give a talk simply because they found out that they weren't one of the first confirmed talks. Only once you've confirmed all the speakers should you make the general announcement that everything is decided.

Run-throughs

It's ideal to do run-throughs with the speakers about two months out. This serves multiple purposes:

• It gives speakers feedback without enough lead time so they have time to make changes.
• It forces speakers to not be throwing their talk together last minute.
• It gives you confidence that there will be no surprises when it comes to the day of the conference.

We didn't do run throughs this time around due to time constraints, but I'd like to do them in the future.

Schedule

There's only a few guidelines for the schedule:

• Put talks that you think will get a lot of attention first and last.
• Put talks that you think will generate a lot of discussion right before lunch so that people can spend lunch talking about it.

Timeline

• 7 months out
  • Pick the committee
  • Create the CfP
• 5 months out: close the CfP
• 4 months out
  • Finalize evaluations
  • Notify speakers
  • Start publicizing selections
• 2 months out:
  • Run-throughs
  • Finalize schedule

Talks

A good length is 25 minutes. 45 minutes is long enough that attention spans start to wane.

A good program has a mix of

• beginner level talks
• experience reports
• weird shit
• highly technical talks

Workshops

90 minutes is a good duration. Depending on the size of the workshop room, how many tracks there are, etc, you might want to solicit volunteers to float around and answer questions.

Lightning talks

• First come, first serve (no pre-planned schedule)
• 5 minutes each
• Be extremely vigilant about the time, the pressure makes it fun

Unconf

This is discussion time that's intentionally unstructured.

• Grab whiteboards or post-it notes
• Give attendees a couple of minutes to submit their discussion topics
• Allow submitters 10 seconds to describe their topics
• Give attendees a couple of minutes to vote on the topics they want to discuss (1 or 2 votes each works well)
• Take the top N topics
• Send each topic to a different part of the room/venue

Having whiteboards on hand is nice because it lets someone take notes. You can also have one person take notes and post them somewhere.

AV

• Figure out recording
  • Will it be live streamed?
  • Do lights need to be dimmed to see the projector?
• Mics
  • Have one lav mic and one handheld mic
  • The handheld mic is good for getting questions from the audience
• Have speakers show up at the beginning of the day so everyone can do an AV check
• Coach speakers on proper mic technique if they're using the handheld mic

Branding

This is mostly developing the graphics for the event.

• What's the logo?
• What do badges look like?
• Do we need stickers?
• Do we need our own signs?
• How's the website going to look?

Comms

We absolutely need a way to send messages to all the attendees. That was sorely lacking the first time around.

We also need a plan for regularly making social media posts about selected speakers, sessions, etc.

The Matrix channel is a good place to field questions, but most people aren't on Matrix, and it became unclear whether that was a space for organizing or for attendees to congregate.

Data

• We need a list of registered attendees
  • We also need their shirt size (didn't get that this time around)
• If we have a scanner for "lead generation" post someone outside the room so they can scan people on their way into the talk.
  • Only scanning people who ordered shirts will undercount walk-ins.
• Maybe offer scanners to sponsors at a certain tier?

Day-of

Before arriving, you need a list of volunteers and a schedule of when they're needed where. You definitely need a list and a schedule for people working the check-in table.

Engagement

This section is about how we get attendees to connect with each other.

One way is to have a QR code on the attendee's badge with a vCard on it so that attendees can scan each other's badges to get their contact info.

Another way is to assign each attendee a "store path" (/nix/store/<5 character hash>). The idea is that there's a fixed number of these store paths, and you're supposed to go find the other people with that store path.

Karaoke

This is fun and it lets you see a side of people you don't normally see at the conference.

Ideally karaoke is within walking distance of the venue. Last time karaoke was a 15 minute drive, which I think hurt attendance.

Depending on expected attendance and the size of the karaoke venue, you might want to buy the place out. Some locations won't let you do this at all. If you start the conversation early enough and starting throwing numbers around that may change some minds. We didn't buy the place out last time and it was fine.

Do not go to a cash-only location, it's just a headache. Do not go toa location that only has private karaoke rooms, the whole point is for everyone to meet each other and have fun. Normal karaoke patrons that aren't part of the conference can also fill in gaps when the conference attendees are feeling nervous.

Signage

Need to have a location that this can be delivered.

Sponsors

There needs to be a well-defined cutoff after which sponsors will not be able to appear on printed materials.

Swag

Need a place for this to be delivered.

If we spend money to create swag bags, we can allow certain sponsorship tiers to put material in the swag bag. If we do that, there needs to be a well-defined cutoff date for when those sponsors can be added and when their materials need to arrive.