Khürt, I suspect that some of the trouble was that the links to sessions didn’t exist until almost immediately before many of them were starting. As described on the main page for the event, most of the planning for sessions was done in an etherpad, and then was transferred directly to the main schedule page. Within a few minutes of the live stream for session scheduling being completed, most of the full schedule appeared on the schedule’s main page. Then for individual sessions, the streaming links were added to the wiki just as each individual session was starting.

This set up is relatively similar to most in-person camps (which these days usually has a pretty robust online and streaming component too) in which sessions are planned directly on site (and which are often streamed live). The main live stream is typically posted towards the top of the main page for the event so it can be easily found. For remote attendees, someone then puts the schedule online on the wiki page for the schedule and then links for live streams are added to those individual sessions as they actually begin.

More often than not, one of the organizers or active attendees will post the live streaming links into the main IndieWeb chat and someone remote will then quickly add those links to the appropriate wiki pages. While optional, when attending camps either remotely or online, your best bet is to have at least one window (or client) open with the IndieWeb chat as that is where most of the real-time notifications about activities will be appearing even before they show up on the relevant wiki pages. If you can’t find particular resources in real time, the chat is also the best place to get a quick response that is likely to not only help you, but help out others who may be lost as well.

Often during a camp (either in person or remote), people will document the proceedings live in the chat as they progress. During particular sessions, this active documentation moves to the custom etherpad set up for the session itself, so that the session is better documented with notes, which are later transferred to a wiki page for that particular session for future reference.

I’ll try to document some of this on the wiki to help make it easier and more obvious for remote attendees at either in person camps or online camps in the future.

If you’ve got other ideas of how to make things easier, feel free to document them on the Post Camp Reflections page.

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