More Son of LISA coverage

Thursday night (November 5th...god I'm behind) was NIGHT OF BoFs. (Dramatic music!) First up was my conference organizer's BoF. In a nutshell: I wanna start a conference; what do I need to know?

There were only a handful of people there, but hey, quality not quantity:

• Deb Nicholson from the FSF
• Scott Murphy, ArrowEye consulting, who has helped with BSDCan
• Ski Kacoroski from LOPSA
• Matt from Standalone Sysadmin, who (like me) was there to learn. (or possibly out of pity for me. Either way.)

Easiest part of organizing a conference: getting speakers. This surprised me, but everyone likes to talk about themselves. WIPs (work-in-progress posters/talks) will get everyone engaged.

Hardest part:

• defining the scope/theme of your event. This is important because a) you need your elevator pitch and b) otherwise it's just Saint Aardvark's Conference About Totally Interesting Stuff, and if you don't happen to be SAtC (poor you!) you may not be all that interested.

• the last week: death by a thousand papercuts + dread

Gotta have it:

• Swag bag. Contact local (or not!) sponsors early. For some reason I'm hung up on t-shirts being TOTES ESSENTIAL, but this is not necessarily the case.

• Chance to meet in advance; break the ice, get the newbies (and we're all newbies) to relax and make friends. If your event is on a Saturday, this is why Friday night was invented. Don't forget to have organizers working the floor.

• Everyone in the same room for meals -- either bring it in, or have one place close by designated and ready. You don't want people scattering to the four winds to eat...they'll never come back. And make the vegetarians/vegans happy; if all they get to eat is crackers and soy bologna, you will hear about it.

Random tips:

• Price the event according to what you aim to give people.

• Think about having a fun track beside one or two serious tracks.

• Record the sessions and offer Ogg/MP3 downloads. Don't forget slides and papers, too.

• Lead time: 9 months probably isn't enough time to organize an event with 300-400 attendees...but 6 months should do for 50 attendees. (That's more the scale I'm aiming at.)

• Careful with vendors; being sold at all day is a definite turnoff

• Re: sysadmin conference in particular: Survey local businesses and see what they need, what they'd send people to see.

• Always look for ways to delegate stuff, or you'll run yourself ragged.

Getting people back next year:

• Finish your closing speech with "See you next year!" ie, ask people to come back, and to spread the word.

• Meet within a month of finishing the conference with next year's organizers and start making plans. Put checklists and improvements on a wiki so that the info doesn't get lost.

• Get new blood every year, both attendees and in the organizing committee.

Also got various contacts and other suggestions from people...thanks very much!

After that came Matt's two BoFs: small infrastructure and bloggers. Unfortunately, my notes suck from these two events...but it was good talk at both. I was surprised to see how many people were there because they're professional writers; I keep thinking of this as just my way of scribbling on the walls.