Open Data Camp: The Good, The Bad and the Surreal

 

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.

See you next year?

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