Hi,
I'd like to share few of my post-Flock thoughts mostly focusing on what we did wrong. Please take it as my personal feedback in order to improve organization of the future conferences. First of all, I must admit that most of the things went OK so these nitpicks are really minor and small.
0. If you offer your phone number as an emergency number for the conference attendees make sure the phone is always charged and you always carry it with you. According to Murphy's law, whenever you leave your phone at your place or let it be discharged one person gets lost or needs your help for whatever reason. :-)
1. We should have issued a "ticket" system for the buses to the Browar Lubicz party. We ordered two cruises of one bus for two reasons: first, 250 people were not supposed to fit into one bus, second, the minimum order of a bus is large enough to make 2 or maybe even 3 cruises. It turned out that the second cruise took only 7 passengers while the first one was full. One bus should take about 160 passengers. Unfortunately, there is no system which stops more passengers to enter the bus. According to what we nicknamed Student's theorem during my university years, every bus can take one more student. :-) I guess we managed to fit 240 people into the bus. Alternative explanation is that there were only 170 people at the party. There was no such problem on other events because we had intercity quality buses with sitting places only, there was a simple rule: no more seats = no more passengers. Somehow this problem also did not arise at the ship party: we had to split into 2 groups, one was eating and another was cruising and then we had to swap and as far as I noticed we did split into 2 roughly equal groups smoothly.
2. IMHO we should not also worry about splitting all attendees into 2 separate groups during the ship cruise. Originally we were trying to make sure we are all at the same place and it led us to the problem that there was no large enough ship in Krakow to take 250 people for a cruise. The aim was to ensure we all integrate. But we actually were split and I don't find it was a problem. You can't integrate with 250 people at the same time. You can integrate with 10 or 20 or slightly more but even 100 is impossible.
3. The last official conference event was the wallpaper hunt, attended by 8 people only. We took a long walk to the tram balloon loop and now I think it was an unnecessary waste of time. It would be better to spend one more PLN and take a bus from the hotel to the tram stop. Also it would be better if one person collected the money and bought tickets for everyone instead of making a queue and letting everyone to buy tickets for oneself. The system I proposed would be good if we were a group of 10-20 people and bought one group ticket. OTOH I hope the attendees enjoyed the tram ride.
Best regards,
Rafal
On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Rafal Luzynski digitalfreak@lingonborough.com wrote:
Hi,
I'd like to share few of my post-Flock thoughts mostly focusing on what we did wrong. Please take it as my personal feedback in order to improve organization of the future conferences. First of all, I must admit that most of the things went OK so these nitpicks are really minor and small.
Thanks for the feedback. Always good to have constructive things to work on. A few questions below.
- If you offer your phone number as an emergency number
for the conference attendees make sure the phone is always charged and you always carry it with you. According to Murphy's law, whenever you leave your phone at your place or let it be discharged one person gets lost or needs your help for whatever reason. :-)
- We should have issued a "ticket" system for the buses
to the Browar Lubicz party. We ordered two cruises of one bus for two reasons: first, 250 people were not supposed to fit into one bus, second, the minimum order of a bus is large enough to make 2 or maybe even 3 cruises. It turned out that the second cruise took only 7 passengers
Are those numbers representative of the buses on the way to the brewery, or on the way back to the hotel?
while the first one was full. One bus should take about 160 passengers. Unfortunately, there is no system which stops more passengers to enter the bus. According to what we nicknamed Student's theorem during my university years, every bus can take one more student. :-) I guess we managed to fit 240 people into the bus. Alternative explanation is that there were only 170 people at the party. There
I'm fairly confident we did not have 240 attendees at Flock in general. 170 people sounds much closer to the overall attendance number that we estimated after the first two days of registrations.
- IMHO we should not also worry about splitting all
attendees into 2 separate groups during the ship cruise. Originally we were trying to make sure we are all at the same place and it led us to the problem that there was no large enough ship in Krakow to take 250 people for a cruise. The aim was to ensure we all integrate. But we actually were split and I don't find it was a problem. You can't integrate with 250 people at the same time. You can integrate with 10 or 20 or slightly more but even 100 is impossible.
That's a good observation, but it is going to vary based on whatever the evening activity is, the location flock is in, and the attendance numbers.
- The last official conference event was the wallpaper
hunt, attended by 8 people only. We took a long walk to the tram balloon loop and now I think it was an unnecessary waste of time. It would be better to spend one more PLN and take a bus from the hotel to the tram stop. Also it would be better if one person collected the money and bought tickets for everyone instead of making a queue and letting everyone to buy tickets for oneself. The system I proposed would be good if we were a group of 10-20 people and bought one group ticket. OTOH I hope the attendees enjoyed the tram ride.
This was not an official conference event. It was a workshop. It was supposed to be self-organized by the people interested in attending. I'm not sure who or how people thought it was equivalent to an official event, but it was definitely not supposed to be.
josh
Just to jump on this thread, i'll add my thoughts on the small parts i contributed to organization: the booklets and the big schedule. I covered these inmy blogpost here: http://www.ryanlerch.org/blog/flock-2016-krakow/
This year, we put the schedule in the booklets (as we have done in all years past), and we also had a big schedule posted up on the wall for each day (as well as the same thing out the front of each room, so people could easily see what was going on in that room at that time) From watching people, itseemed that many many folks used these, and they were very useful. The format of having each talk on a single strip of paper was useful also, as we could move, remove and add talks when things changed.
One thought that Josh and I were throwing around was to not have the schedule in the booklets at all (as this can get out of date when talks are moved or cancelled). But at least one person on my blog pointed out that it was still useful, even if it might have been out of date.
cheers, ryanlerch
On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 5:53 AM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Rafal Luzynski digitalfreak@lingonborough.com wrote:
Hi,
I'd like to share few of my post-Flock thoughts mostly focusing on what we did wrong. Please take it as my personal feedback in order to improve organization of the future conferences. First of all, I must admit that most of the things went OK so these nitpicks are really minor and small.
Thanks for the feedback. Always good to have constructive things to work on. A few questions below.
- If you offer your phone number as an emergency number
for the conference attendees make sure the phone is always charged and you always carry it with you. According to Murphy's law, whenever you leave your phone at your place or let it be discharged one person gets lost or needs your help for whatever reason. :-)
- We should have issued a "ticket" system for the buses
to the Browar Lubicz party. We ordered two cruises of one bus for two reasons: first, 250 people were not supposed to fit into one bus, second, the minimum order of a bus is large enough to make 2 or maybe even 3 cruises. It turned out that the second cruise took only 7 passengers
Are those numbers representative of the buses on the way to the brewery, or on the way back to the hotel?
while the first one was full. One bus should take about 160 passengers. Unfortunately, there is no system which stops more passengers to enter the bus. According to what we nicknamed Student's theorem during my university years, every bus can take one more student. :-) I guess we managed to fit 240 people into the bus. Alternative explanation is that there were only 170 people at the party. There
I'm fairly confident we did not have 240 attendees at Flock in general. 170 people sounds much closer to the overall attendance number that we estimated after the first two days of registrations.
- IMHO we should not also worry about splitting all
attendees into 2 separate groups during the ship cruise. Originally we were trying to make sure we are all at the same place and it led us to the problem that there was no large enough ship in Krakow to take 250 people for a cruise. The aim was to ensure we all integrate. But we actually were split and I don't find it was a problem. You can't integrate with 250 people at the same time. You can integrate with 10 or 20 or slightly more but even 100 is impossible.
That's a good observation, but it is going to vary based on whatever the evening activity is, the location flock is in, and the attendance numbers.
- The last official conference event was the wallpaper
hunt, attended by 8 people only. We took a long walk to the tram balloon loop and now I think it was an unnecessary waste of time. It would be better to spend one more PLN and take a bus from the hotel to the tram stop. Also it would be better if one person collected the money and bought tickets for everyone instead of making a queue and letting everyone to buy tickets for oneself. The system I proposed would be good if we were a group of 10-20 people and bought one group ticket. OTOH I hope the attendees enjoyed the tram ride.
This was not an official conference event. It was a workshop. It was supposed to be self-organized by the people interested in attending. I'm not sure who or how people thought it was equivalent to an official event, but it was definitely not supposed to be.
josh _______________________________________________ flock-planning mailing list flock-planning@lists.fedoraproject.org https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/flock- planning@lists.fedoraproject.org
On Mon, Aug 15, 2016, at 08:12 AM, Ryan Lerch wrote:
Just to jump on this thread, i'll add my thoughts on the small parts i contributed to organization: the booklets and the big schedule. I covered these inmy blogpost here: http://www.ryanlerch.org/blog/flock-2016-krakow/ This year, we put the schedule in the booklets (as we have done in all years past), and we also had a big schedule posted up on the wall for each day (as well as the same thing out the front of each room, so people could easily see what was going on in that room at that time) From watching people, itseemed that many many folks used these, and they were very useful. The format of having each talk on a single strip of paper was useful also, as we could move, remove and add talks when things changed. One thought that Josh and I were throwing around was to not have the schedule in the booklets at all (as this can get out of date when talks are moved or cancelled). But at least one person on my blog pointed out that it was still useful, even if it might have been out of date.
I fully and 100% support not putting the schedule in the book. We use sched.org and have conference wifi. We don't need no stinkin' papers :P (We do need wall schedules, stinkin' or otherwise.)
I believe we could eliminate a lot of the pages in the book and possibly just do a conference pamphlet. This would save trees and money.
regards,
bex
That was my comment on Ryan's blog, and although I'm all for saving trees, I found paper schedule extremely valuable. Here's my comment: "...I would also keep the printed schedule: I checked it quite a bit, as wifi was not always available when I had an urge to check it out away from the hotel or plan for the next day. Also one can mark the talks they want to visit on paper 😉"
But maybe it's just me? As a designer I have this thing for paper, you know...
Best regards, Maria Leonova
Interaction designer | PNT Portal mashaleonova.wordpress.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Exelbierd" bex@pobox.com To: flock-planning@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Monday, August 15, 2016 3:12:28 PM Subject: Re: Few post-Flock thoughts
On Mon, Aug 15, 2016, at 08:12 AM, Ryan Lerch wrote:
Just to jump on this thread, i'll add my thoughts on the small parts i contributed to organization: the booklets and the big schedule. I covered these inmy blogpost here: http://www.ryanlerch.org/blog/flock-2016-krakow/ This year, we put the schedule in the booklets (as we have done in all years past), and we also had a big schedule posted up on the wall for each day (as well as the same thing out the front of each room, so people could easily see what was going on in that room at that time) From watching people, itseemed that many many folks used these, and they were very useful. The format of having each talk on a single strip of paper was useful also, as we could move, remove and add talks when things changed. One thought that Josh and I were throwing around was to not have the schedule in the booklets at all (as this can get out of date when talks are moved or cancelled). But at least one person on my blog pointed out that it was still useful, even if it might have been out of date.
I fully and 100% support not putting the schedule in the book. We use sched.org and have conference wifi. We don't need no stinkin' papers :P (We do need wall schedules, stinkin' or otherwise.)
I believe we could eliminate a lot of the pages in the book and possibly just do a conference pamphlet. This would save trees and money.
regards,
bex
_______________________________________________ flock-planning mailing list flock-planning@lists.fedoraproject.org https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/flock-planning@lists.fedoraproje...
13.08.2016 21:53 Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Rafal Luzynski digitalfreak@lingonborough.com wrote:
[...]
- We should have issued a "ticket" system for the buses
to the Browar Lubicz party. We ordered two cruises of one bus for two reasons: first, 250 people were not supposed to fit into one bus, second, the minimum order of a bus is large enough to make 2 or maybe even 3 cruises. It turned out that the second cruise took only 7 passengers
Are those numbers representative of the buses on the way to the brewery, or on the way back to the hotel?
To the brewery. The way back went smoothly and even better than anyone of us expected. There were 3 bus cruises, each able to take 110 people and my estimate is that there were only 40-60 people in each cruise.
Another observation here is that people tend not to come back to the hotel after an organized event but instead decide to have more fun in the city downtown and then come back later on their own.
while the first one was full. One bus should take about 160 passengers. Unfortunately, there is no system which stops more passengers to enter the bus. According to what we nicknamed Student's theorem during my university years, every bus can take one more student. :-) I guess we managed to fit 240 people into the bus. Alternative explanation is that there were only 170 people at the party. There
I'm fairly confident we did not have 240 attendees at Flock in general. 170 people sounds much closer to the overall attendance number that we estimated after the first two days of registrations.
Again this leads to the statement that we should have better taken the largest ship available in Krakow which takes 200 passengers and organize a full cruise evening like in Prague 2014.
[...]
- The last official conference event was the wallpaper
hunt, attended by 8 people only. We took a long walk to the tram balloon loop and now I think it was an unnecessary waste of time. It would be better to spend one more PLN and take a bus from the hotel to the tram stop. Also it would be better if one person collected the money and bought tickets for everyone instead of making a queue and letting everyone to buy tickets for oneself. The system I proposed would be good if we were a group of 10-20 people and bought one group ticket. OTOH I hope the attendees enjoyed the tram ride.
This was not an official conference event. It was a workshop. It was supposed to be self-organized by the people interested in attending. I'm not sure who or how people thought it was equivalent to an official event, but it was definitely not supposed to be.
Thanks for correcting, probably "event" is not a correct word here. Still I think there were better solutions for the transport. The group was small and even taking the taxi cabs would be reasonable.
While at this, I'd like also to add that even organizing Flock immediately after World Youth Days turned out to be not as crazy idea as we originally thought. WYD estimates were higher than the reality, although the city center was crowded the outskirts were not, the security means were raised to a paranoid level and I hope that Flock attendees only profitted from them rather than suffered, and Krakow, although always having some cosmopolitan flavour, this time shown its unusually global face.
Regards,
Rafal
On Mon, Aug 15, 2016, at 11:59 PM, Rafal Luzynski wrote:
13.08.2016 21:53 Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Rafal Luzynski digitalfreak@lingonborough.com wrote:
[...]
- We should have issued a "ticket" system for the buses
to the Browar Lubicz party. We ordered two cruises of one bus for two reasons: first, 250 people were not supposed to fit into one bus, second, the minimum order of a bus is large enough to make 2 or maybe even 3 cruises. It turned out that the second cruise took only 7 passengers
Are those numbers representative of the buses on the way to the brewery, or on the way back to the hotel?
To the brewery. The way back went smoothly and even better than anyone of us expected. There were 3 bus cruises, each able to take 110 people and my estimate is that there were only 40-60 people in each cruise.
Another observation here is that people tend not to come back to the hotel after an organized event but instead decide to have more fun in the city downtown and then come back later on their own.
This is probably dependent on the city. For example, in Rochester had there been transportation, I think most people would have returned to the hotel as the area around the hotel was more inviting than the area around the evening venues, iirc.
while the first one was full. One bus should take about 160 passengers. Unfortunately, there is no system which stops more passengers to enter the bus. According to what we nicknamed Student's theorem during my university years, every bus can take one more student. :-) I guess we managed to fit 240 people into the bus. Alternative explanation is that there were only 170 people at the party. There
I'm fairly confident we did not have 240 attendees at Flock in general. 170 people sounds much closer to the overall attendance number that we estimated after the first two days of registrations.
Again this leads to the statement that we should have better taken the largest ship available in Krakow which takes 200 passengers and organize a full cruise evening like in Prague 2014.
This decision was based on registration. We had a lot of no-shows this year.
- The last official conference event was the wallpaper
hunt, attended by 8 people only. We took a long walk to the tram balloon loop and now I think it was an unnecessary waste of time. It would be better to spend one more PLN and take a bus from the hotel to the tram stop. Also it would be better if one person collected the money and bought tickets for everyone instead of making a queue and letting everyone to buy tickets for oneself. The system I proposed would be good if we were a group of 10-20 people and bought one group ticket. OTOH I hope the attendees enjoyed the tram ride.
This was not an official conference event. It was a workshop. It was supposed to be self-organized by the people interested in attending. I'm not sure who or how people thought it was equivalent to an official event, but it was definitely not supposed to be.
Thanks for correcting, probably "event" is not a correct word here. Still I think there were better solutions for the transport. The group was small and even taking the taxi cabs would be reasonable.
While at this, I'd like also to add that even organizing Flock immediately after World Youth Days turned out to be not as crazy idea as we originally thought. WYD estimates were higher than the reality, although the city center was crowded the outskirts were not, the security means were raised to a paranoid level and I hope that Flock attendees only profitted from them rather than suffered, and Krakow, although always having some cosmopolitan flavour, this time shown its unusually global face.
Thank you again for all of your help in taming this locally!
regards,
bex
Regards,
Rafal _______________________________________________ flock-planning mailing list flock-planning@lists.fedoraproject.org https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/flock-planning@lists.fedoraproje...
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