Tantek Çelik (tantek.com)Sharing brief @IndieWebSummit notes as they come to mind.
This was the first year people pre-wrote proposals before the #BarCamp organizing session. As facilitator I decided to have people who never proposed before go first.
Coincidentally, @Christi3k just announced the same thing @OSBridge unconference organizing session.
This may be worth codifing as a normal practice. Let first-timers propose sessions first before anyone who has done this before, especially at an @IndieWebCamp before.
The other thing I did was, after the the first-timers finished explaining and scheduling their BarCamp session proposals, I had people *other than* the remaining session proposers choose from the remaining session proposals posted on the side of the grid, and advocate for them. I think that worked quite well for selecting for the sessions that were more compelling for more people.
While there is some implication in the event pages, I don’t know if some people were expecting the sessions and planning to play out the way they did (or if they knew what to expect on that front at all, particularly in chatting with people in the early morning registration/breakfast part of the day).
It was certainly more productive for me to think about and post some of the things I wanted to accomplish pre-camp. (It also helped to have your reminder a month or more ago about what I might build before even going to the summit.)
Having additional time to know what the scheduling process looks like, if nothing else, gives people a bit more time to think about what they want to get out of the conference and propose some additional ideas without being under the short time crunch. This is particularly apropos when the morning presentations may have run long and the conference is already a few minutes off track and we’re eating into valuable session time otherwise. I would suspect that helping to get the session ideas flowing sooner than later may also help the idea and creative processes, and even more so for participants who may need a bit more time to organize their thoughts and communicate them as they’d like.
I definitely liked the process of having beginners go first and then letting people advocate for particular ideas thereafter. This worked particularly well for an established event and one with so many people. It might be helpful to pre-select one potentially popular proposal from an older hand to go first though, to provide an example of the process for those who are new to it, and in particular those who might be quiet, shy, or not be the type to raise their hands and advocate in front of such a large group. In fact, given this, another option is to allow people to propose sessions and then allow advocation across the board, but for beginners first followed by everyone thereafter. This may also encourage better thought out initial proposals as well.
Thanks again for all your hard work and preparation Tantek!
