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?