Talk:BarCamp - How to Run Your Own

To start with I'm hoping to only start with people who have actually run a BarCamp.

Can I suggest you please mark your name down below and list which barcamps.

Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden - BarCampLondon1,2,3 and BarCampManchester2

Michael Brunton-Spall | @bruntonspall - Organised Scale Camp, attended a BarCamp London (6 or 7 I think) and BarCamb

IRC collaboration
On 2010-12-18, some of us met on IRC to work out how to take this project forward.

Here are the running notes from the session.

People we should approach

 * Ian
 * Cristiano Betta
 * Alistair
 * Jot, Jay Gooby
 * cbgreenwood
 * Andrew Disley
 * Gemma
 * Tara Hunt / Chris Messina
 * Ianibbo
 * Jaugusti
 * Boozeniges
 * Cyberdees
 * Mike Ellis
 * Mark Ng
 * Ross (bcl4)
 * Kaite Lips
 * John Eland (PhotoCamp Leeds)
 * Dom Hodgson

Questions to ask

 * prelim info: which BarCamp(s) did you run and when?
 * what prompted you to run a barcamp?
 * which barcamps had you attended before you thought about organising one?
 * how did you go about planning it?
 * did you have a team?
 * if so, how did you get people involved?
 * how many?
 * how did you split the work up?
 * any conflicts between the team?
 * what did you use for planning? mailing list? wiki? irc? twitter? skype?
 * how often did you meet?
 * Sponsorship
 * how did you get sponsorship? who did you approach?
 * any particularly interesting sponsors?
 * any sponsors you would avoid and why - no names!
 * did you think about charging a fee instead of/as well as getting sponsors?
 * did you give any sponsors tickets for any reason?
 * were there any sponsors who made it difficult to run the event?
 * do you think barcamp can be too reliant on big company sponsorship?
 * schwag: good or bad? in the spirit of barcamp?
 * Venue
 * how did you approach the venue?
 * (if overnight:) was it hard to convince them to let you use the building overnight?
 * (if overnight:) how essential was the overnight?
 * security, health and safety - how did you deal with that kind of stuff?
 * did you have to do venue visits up front?
 * any issues with transport?
 * how did you get buy-in from security, management etc?
 * any problems with the venue?
 * did you have to do anything about venue accessibility?
 * ticketing
 * how many tickets did you have to give out?
 * how quickly did your tickets sell out?
 * did you give tickets out in batches or all in one go?
 * how many people turned up?
 * did you have any strategies to get people to actually turn up?
 * did you reserve any tickets for particular groups (women, first-time attendees etc.)?
 * did you have any complaints about ticketing?
 * Grid
 * what did you do with the grid?
 * was the grid crowded?
 * there's some controversy about having an online grid. what do you think about this?
 * food and drink:
 * what did you do for food?
 * how did you deal with dietary requirements - vegetarians, vegans etc.?
 * what about snacks?
 * any problems with the food?
 * any lessons about catering?
 * what about alcohol?
 * had any problems with drunks?
 * What is your best complaint?

—Tom Morris (talk) 12:15, 18 December 2010 (UTC)