Liveblogged notes from the feedback session closing Open Data Camp 2015
Acts of ?Deity
- Rain! Bad rain!
Logistics
- Too many t-shirts
- Too much food
- Maybe stuff with a longer life to make it easier to donate
- No milk for tea on Sunday
- Bit more variety in veggie stuff
- Vegan?
- Cake was good!
Data
- More information needed on who attendees are
- Maybe split registration so we know how many people are attending each day
- Capture geographical data
- Capture Twitter handles and site addresses
- Some people not happy to share that with commercial sites
- Wordle of attendees’ RSS feeds?
Connectivity
- WiFi connectivity is bit dodgy (but better than most conference)
- VPNs are a problems.
- SSID missing from badge
Social
- Pub was a bit far away
- No afterparty
Timing and organisation
- Clarity on time – the change to the starting time wasn’t widely shared
- Don’t assume newbies will understand how an unconference will work.Give them more details.
- Tell people what times the sessions are at the beginning
- Have the key organisers (or at least some who are free to aid people) introduce themselves, so you know who to go to for help.
- One colour of organiser t-shirt, not two. Star Trek demands that it’s red…
- Maybe the decision to coincide with Open Data Day was a mistake
- We lost interesting people to local events
- Ride share system? Cars – or travelling together by train
- The Google Groups were difficult to use and hard to find
- Hotel rate negotiated?
Session structure
- 25 min to 30 min slots than can be put together for longer sessions
- Lightning talks? 5 to 10 minute talks. Brings variety to the day
- They would need gaps, a breakout area and Twitter handles on screen
Activities
- The Cabinet Office released data sets for us – and they weren’t used
- That means we don’t really have anything to show now
- More diversity of datasets – museums? art galleries?
Marketing
- We relied on Twitter and blogs
- Sold out quickly – could we have used other channels?
- Danger of getting stuck in one bubble of data geeks
- T-shirts maybe not working?
- Get sizes in advance
- Stickers? NOT mugs
- Publish data about the event on the site – a digital souvenir
- Snoods? Hats?
- Water bottle is a popular idea – would reduce waste
- Room keen on no physical goods and digital data store
- Lunchboxes for the food with stickers on?
Sponsors
- Read them out
- As URIs on the site?
- Are we tracking why they sponsor us?
- Sponsor talking slots – 5 mins.
- Not all sponsors want more than the event to happen
Diversity
- Gender diversity an issue on Sunday
- More designers at the event? We need more data users.
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