Share your thoughts on BarCampRochester2 and how can we make your BCR3 experience kick even more ass!

• Organization
  • From a host's standpoint, I think it would've been nice to have a list of emails collected somewhere, so I could get in touch with everyone uniformly. Ah, ad-hocness :) -Jason
  • The rooms didn't get unlocked until REALLY LAST MINUTE, which is why I was rushing in the morning and didn't get to put together a formal registration checklist - this would've been nice too :) -Jason
  • Using Pledgie to collect donations last-minute was extremely painless and worked very well. Kudos to Pledgie, however it fits into future BarCamps :) -Jason
  • Having people list t-shirt sizes was a great way to get a good estimate.-emily
  • It was hard to tell who was going to come for sure. So it was a little tricky figuring out the amount of food. We figured in 40 people for food(lunch & dinner) eventhough at least 60 had signed up at the time. -emily

• Food
  • What did you think of the food? Quality? Quantity? Too much, too little, didn't feel xyz was necessary, wished there was zyx?
  • I was pretty famished by the time dinner rolled around, a few more things to hold out over the afternoon would have been nice. -Jason
  • What kinds of foods were you thinking, Jason? There was still a whole bag of bagels left at the end. We could have had more food if anyone cared to bring any. Did everyone know that they can bring snacks or was everyone just too busy? -emily
  • FYI: Here's the order from Open Face 3 Tasting Trays ($75 each feeding 12-14pple). 1st Tray (2x Chicken Salad, 2xRoast Beef). 2nd Tray (2xMaple Turkey, Pepper Turkey, Genoa Salami). 3rd Tray (All vegetarian - Chick Pea, Black Bean, Soft Brie, Goat Cheese). Subtotal $225 plus tax was $243.

• Date
  • The date was certainly an issue for some (particularly students). I believe BarCampRochester3 is being tentatively planned for fall. Are any particular dates good/bad?
  • BarCapRochester3 is tentatively being planned for the first half of October. Pat Tribble and I are currently planning on starting the logistics over the summer. We will be reading this as we start that process and please don't hesitate to contact either of us with ideas or if you would like to help (mdumont at csh dot rit dot edu). - Mike Dumont

• Length
  • Did you like the single day length? Would 2 days be better? Too much?
  • Should there be a Friday night get-together, followed by a full day of BarCamping? -Jason
  • I think the Friday night idea is a good idea, no real formal sessions maybe just get some food and have kind of a social night and then do the day of BarCamping. -Mike Dumont
  • I don't think two days would be good, as I'm sure people who aren't very close to the location would not like driving out twice. I thought all in one day worked very well. People who didn't show up for the night before might also be less inclined to come for the following day, when you really want people. -Steve

• Session Length
  • Half hour sessions seemed quite fast-paced to me... perhaps a longer session is warranted? -Jason
  • I was thinking 45 minute sessions would work well. I think any time is going to be tough because I know some sessions ran short so the room wouldn't be used whereas some ran long and pushed back the schedule. I was planning on getting a fourth room for the fall. -Mike Dumont
  • Get rooms that are closer together if possible. I prefer not to have too many concurrent sessions so that people don't have to choose between so many. But a 4th room could be available just in case. -emily
  • I think having different length tracks would be a better idea. Two tracks an 50 minutes long, with another track 25 minutes long (this way there can be a 10 minute break to change rooms). That was a big problem, no time to change rooms. There should also be more strictness on keeping the talks on time. Several people went over and other people had very little time to speak. There should also be polling of who is interested in sessions so the size of the rooms can be better predicted. A few presentations in the big room had no one in there, and one or two presentations in other rooms had no seats left. A few other complaints I heard was that there wasn't any down time or chill time. I think reserving a room for that would be cool. Lumping similar sessions into one room would also be good. If you went to the Web 2.0 talks, most people there went to all the similar talks, so if they were all grouped together, most people could see what they wanted to without changing rooms.

• Format
  • 3 tracks... what was the good/bad/ugly? How can this be addressed? (We'll have video coverage of a few morning sessions coming online eventually... thanks Jason and Adam!!) It also seemed nice to have a down-time room (occasionally when there was no session going on int 2400... also the food was there). Should there be a reserved lounge/relax/food/videogames room? Should there be more or fewer tracks?
  • Maybe should we spend more time juggling the sessions around in the morning? -Jason
  • I like the idea of a reserved down time room because there were times when I didn't want to barge in on a session but I wanted to grab something from the food in 2400. I think 3 tracks worked good and I think adding a fourth has the upside of putting more sessions in in the morning before we start to lose momentum towards the evening. I also think that putting in a fourth will cause more conflicts with interesting presentations. Thoughts anyone? - Mike Dumont

• Advertising
  • This is immensely helpful for future organizers - please let us know how you heard about BarCampRochester2, and/or where you think we should reach out that we might have forgotten about. BarCamp.org RSS, flyers, user group email, Facebook, a friend, etc...
  • Fliers on campus/friend/facebook. -Mike Dumont
  • I plan on using fliers and facebook advertisements as well as barcamp.org and word of mouth for next years advertising. -Mike Dumont

THANKS!!