NickDeMey.be

Nick, wat puntje 2 betreft: ik denk dat een live-streaming van zo een event (desnoods eenmalig) op dat vlak veel kan oplossen. Nieuwsgierigen of bange geïnteresseerden kunnen eventjes piepen wat er gebeurt of toch alleszins te weten komen hoe het in z’n werk gaat en wat er te zien valt.

Misschien iets voor de Barcamp op de VRT in januari? Die digitale zenders liggen er toch redelijk ongebruikt bij…

Ook: ik heb dit jaar soortgelijk evenement georganiseerd voor totaal ander volk (NIET-internauten). Het bestaat dus wel, maar het komt niet zo hard onder de aandacht :)

Agreed met de T-shirts, grote waste of money indeed.

Ik ben al 2 jaar bezig om de maart-editie van Barcamp Antwerpen open te trekken. Ik slaag daar reeds een heel klein beetje in, maar inderdaad nog lang niet genoeg.

Hoe ‘organiseer’ je iets dat niet georganiseerd wordt.
Hoe zorg je ervoor dat er geen ‘opstand’ komt door de usual suspects, terwijl de nieuwe mensen toch een goed idee hebben over wat er gaat gebeuren.
Ik wil Barcamp 25 maart nog meer open trekken. En de communicatie op voorhand naar andere groepen (mensen die niet twitteren en niet blogen) voor dat de tickets open gezet worden is daarbij essentieel.
Wie daarbij kan helpen, of daar tips voor heeft, mag me zeker contacteren. (@topanga / @barcampbelgium)

Wat puntje 1 betreft: het is een ‘vies’ iets: Je geraakt niet aan sponsors als je niet iets hebt waar je logo’s op kan drukken. Dat het geen t-shirt moet zijn daar ben ik al lang achter, maar dat er een gadget met plek voor logo’s moet zijn, dat weet ik jammer genoeg wel.

I think the level of geekiness varies from event to event. Certainly in the first Bizcamp in Brussels the focus was heavily on business, funding strategies, subsidy traps, exits, legal and IP issues and people being very open about the amount people had gained in their first business and lost in their second etc

@Gilbert: Idd, from content-perspective (if that’s a word) I liked that bizcamp even more. You may wonder why a lot the attendants of that edition didn’t joined yesterday? Any ideas?

I’m thinking on few ideas which I hope can help improving bizcamp:

1. Presentation
Benchmarking with the pecha-kucha (www.pecha-kucha.org), they allow 20 slides x 20 second/slide, giving in total a nearly 6.5 minutes for each presenter. By this, the presentation shall be condensed but also precise and interesting, allowing a rapid flow of the presentation while keeping it on the right track. If Bizcamp allocates 30 minutes for each session, the remaining 23.5 minutes is allocated for open discussion, Q&A and sharing knowledge between the presenter and the audience. Content of presentation is more likely similar to yesterday, such as the expertise of the presenter, key successes, set up, failures (indeed people shall also learn why things/business could be failed and learnt from other experiences), open sharing (such as the session about how foreigner can survive in Belgium).

I would also think to arrange the time in between sessions more efficient and to minimize people to go back and forth from the auditorium/oval room/meeting room to the foyer to listen to the brief introduction of next session. I think it will be more efficient to briefly present the presentation contents for all morning sessions (before lunch) altogether. Then people can easily move from one room to the other room without coming back to the foyer and the saving in time can be allocated for a longer time in the presentation session.

2. Business/Entrepreneur Values & Attitudes
Apparently, root problem of the confirmed attendance vs the people who weren’t showing up, left over food and t-shirts, rooted from the unappreciated free event. Some people may think they don’t lose anything if they don’t come as they don’t need to pay to register to this event, it leads then to an action/thought: “I would register, but then if I had another thing to do, then I could easily not coming to this bizcamp event – as I wouldn’t lose anything”. This thought and attitude – unfortunately – do not give any respect and appreciation to the people who arrange the bizcamp event and the hardwork these people have to do in preparing such event.
Hence, we are dealing with “values and attitudes” in this case. I think it will be good for bizcamp to emphasize some values and attitudes ones must have in order to be successful in the business. Regardless being a professional or entrepreneur, having the right values and attitudes matter most – not only it’s the one of the key to success, but also it’s the main characteristics that differentiate the successful one with the least success one. I think in the next event, bizcamp can start to emphasize some simple but true business values in the websites/during the registration, give a little explanation behind each values, and correlates such values with the bizcamp registration process.
A little example such as:
Values:
Respect people and people will respect you back.
Correlation to bizcamp registration:
By registering to bizcamp, please make it to attend the event. Some people are doing hardwork preparing this event, and if you have registered but you are not showing up, you are not showing respect to the people who have been preparing this event as to some extent their hardwork become useless.
(Of course the sentence can be polished up with a better choice of words)

Actually, those phrases are already there in the registration ticket but it seems less eye catching, doing this in the process before registering may be worth to try.

However, these values must be stated as well in bizcamp’s website and people can understand that the entrepreneur in bizcamp believe in the same values and therefore it would be easier for bizcamp to “enforce” such values in the registration process, and to continue emphasizing it during the bizcamp session.

I personally think, as the target audience of bizcamp are entrepreneurs and professionals – they should understand the values and having such right attitudes.

Operation-wise, upon doing this slight improvement in the registration process, bizcamp may also consider to reduce the amount of meals ordered and perhaps limit it to 2 sandwiches/person. After-all, I believe bizcamp is not an event to seek for a free lunch, but it is more into networking and the lunch is just a tool bizcamp uses to maximize the time and chit chat among the presenter and audience. Therefore I think the meal portion won’t be matter that much.

I would also think to drop off the T-shirts if it gives too much operational problem. Though it’s good to have the common fun bizcamp T-shirt, nevertheless, again the key purpose of bizcamp is far more than just the T-shirt.

3. Investment Fee
It would be good as well to put some “Investment Fee”, in attending this event. Even as a student, I don’t mind to put investment fee to attend bizcamp. The reasons ultimately with the return on investment we get in bizcamp such as network, knowledge sharing, new insights and inspirations – worth a lot more than the Eur 10 or 20 which I invest to this event. Entreprenurs and professionals shall understand well the concept of investment in business and the ROI, and they also understand well the importance of business networking. Nevertheless, the word “Investment Fee” must be utilized instead of “Registration Fee” – it plays significant difference :)

I think that Bart mentioned Bizcamp is bound by certain rules that means it has to be a free event in order to use the “camp” in the name.

I’m sure one of the organisers will clarify this point.

@Nick, RE the people who attended the first BizCamp but not this one, well my guess would be that it was just the change of location. The positive side of that was the number of people who had never been to a bizcamp before. There was a show of hands in one of the afternoon sessions and the majority of people had never attended a bizcamp before.

Hopefully they will come to the next one inspired to share their own experiences in a presentation of their own.

Thanks for the tips. We sure try to take the good advice, and apply it in the next edition.

Just this remark: you list some suggestions to optimize the event experience, to make it a more professional-looking/professional-run event, in other words: an event that can compete with other events out there.

The side of the equation that is left out, is the organizer’s side. The better the conference experience, the more people you reach, the more effort that requires from the organizer – and the more nitpicky and spoilt the audience. And the less likely it will be a satisfying experience for the volunteer organiser. The latter is a necessary condition if you want it to make it repeatable.

I think it’s a good thing if an unconference has some amateurish or chaotic aspects. It makes visible that it’s a volunteer-run event, and that you as a participant have responsibility too. If the event goes smooth and slick, participants accept that as self-evident, and expect a next edition to realise itself without them having to put any effort in.

If you want to optimize the event, you have to take into account both sides…

There are definitely smart ideas to be found to make a bizcamp (or another unconference) a better experience _without_ making it frustrating for the organizers. But for other aspects it’s going to be a compromise.