BarCampBlock Learnings

At BarCamp, I think participants gain one thing overall.  A belief in sharing.  It is a real barn raising.  From event organization, volunteers pitching in, neighbors opening their doors, donors fulfilling need, speakers coming out of the woodwork, sociable hallways and sidewalks -- and mostly people sharing concepts and code for anyone to build upon.  The underlying culture of the Valley, the part that powers our engines of growth and creative destruction, was definitively in downtown Palo Alto this weekend.  You could hear echos of the research parks, events, bars and homebrew computer clubs that used to get people out of their garages to build something new, together.

BarCampBlock successfully scaled participation to a new level.  Thanks to the people who opened their doors (Socialtext, IDEO, IFTF, Edgeio, SearchSpark, EchoSign, Princeton Review and Riviera Partners all donated, and a deal cut with Blue Chalk Cafe) -- we had room for ~1,000 participants and ~20 concurrent sessions.  We had over 100 sponsors and a great way of thanking them is copying and posting the Sponsor Roll. 

The block concept was borne out of a simple need to expand beyond the Socialtext office.  We are lucky to have some great outdoor areas around the office that gives it a campus feel, but when we hosted Dcamp using the adjacent Princeton Review space, we knew we were at a limit of 300.  We ended up with space sponsors no more than two blocks away in three directions.  Blocking the street off would have been a lot of bureaucracy (permit, insurance, fire, police) and only helped for hallway space unless you added the cost of tenting. 

The end vision of this could be taking over an entire downtown.  But to do so would require several things, starting with more advance planning than two weeks, a better assembly area, grid and wiki use.

One thing we explored was having different spaces host different themes (e.g. a design camp at IDEO, future camp at IFTF). We decided that even if the core location wasn't themeless it could hurt the highly valued cross-pollenization and not to try the experiment this time.  But I think it could help with the mental model of the space for participants and help the law of two feet.  While we allowed for ample time between sessions (15 min), the law of two feet says you are responsible for your own experience and if you aren't getting what you want out of a session to go find a conversation elsewhere.  I don't think people did this unless it was within Socialtext.  IFTF, for example, had four rooms and very different topics at a given time.  Having a theme for a satellite space I actually believe would work against homogeneity, attract more participants, enable space hosts to be more involved, but you would need time directed at main space activities.

As a main space activity I'm less a fan of is DemoCamp, because it works against the law of two feet.  It asks all participants to have dedicated attention to 5 minute structured demos.  My preference is for these demos to be regular sessions (with clear warnings if they will be commercial instead of conversational).  Just like when we saw Flock, Pandora and other launches at the first BarCamp, the best part of it was the conversations that validated demos and feedback for presenters.  That said, BarCamp has become such a big thing that having DemoCamp as an escape valve for product pitches may be good. 

Also, unfortunately, the Blue Chalk space had bad audio dynamics that amplified when someone was having a conversation instead of listening to the demos.  The space was good for the party and saved us for session capacity, but without booking well in advance we didn't have many other options.  I am unabashedly a fan of having a big party, bringing everyone together without their laptops, and outdoors would be even better, but when planning you need to, again, give people the ability to opt out -- and find a quiet place to go hack (we kept a Socialtext office open, but it was a little distant to be ideal).

Capacity estimation is a very big problem.  Eventbrite was a good tool for registration, but perhaps we could make it more granular (day 1, evening 1, day 2, etc.) and start registration earlier.  When you go from 200 to 1,000 people registered in a week, that really effects your ability to reserve the right spaces.

Signage, courtesy of Yahoo!, absolutely rocked.  But given what we all do for a living or interest, there is a mashup for blockmobs that needs to be made: A living map that lets you view, fast forward and rewind the schedule and geotagged twits/jaikus/wiki pages.  It also needs a mobile version for the live stream.  This isn't the most important thing, but it sure would be neat.  It is hard aggregate and visualize such a dynamic physical and conversational space.

Having a Kid space was absolutely great.  I brought my son by Sunday and it both gave him an experience and I had mine.  I noticed Jyri's Jaiku that the kid space was empty when we walked by it on Sunday, which reminded me of how many people participated in Reboot in Denmark with their families.  Some of it is the culture of Northern Europe, but they went beyond the affordance of a room with toys.  Everyone was in a way watching out for the little ones.  BarCamps are hard on families, taking that time away on a weekend should be recognized as lost potential.  I would strongly suggest for a BarCamp of any decent scale to create a KidCamp -- a themed camp for not just kids, but families.  Let not only babysitting self-organize, but let people bring group activities for kids, give lectures storytime and have talks on parenting.

Lastly, to make it downtown-scale, you should involve local businesses.  For example, Fraiche Yogurt offered 20% off and got more than business in return.  If you scale this up to 5,000 people, which I think is possible, regardless of the appealing demographics, you suddenly have leverage in where they go to work out favorable terms with local venues and services.  You could also benefit from cooperation with the city manager's office, get a common insurance policy and enable more creative things.

But there I go again exploring how to make it even bigger.  Liz Henry has some fantastic and practical notes on organizing BarCampBlock.  And I have to say it is absolutely amazing to work with Chris Messina, Tara Hunt, Liz Henry, Tantek as organizers and core volunteers like Tara Anderson.  While I may have co-founded BarCamp by simply being a good neighbor, it is amazing how Chris and Tara have turned it into a global phenomenon.  I can't thank people enough, and haven't even written about the content of the event yet, but can say I look forward to the next one.

Comments

[Andy Stack]

Yes, the organization was great. Kudos to those who helped pull it together.
I REALLY like the idea of the self-organizing kid activities and thinking about how to make things more family friendly esp if the events are on weekends. I didn't know about the kid's room until I saw it Sunday morning. And it would have helped me because my BarCamp experience was fractured by a few trips back home to kid-wrangle.

I would totally love to host sessions about Parent Hacks or how to combine techniques with technology to make family life better, more enjoyable, and less stressful. ie, hacking your tivo to easily get Sesame Street onto your minivan's DVD player, setting up and safely broadcasting a crib-cam, mashing-up a photosharing site with your cellphone, sleep training techniques, etc. This could be a SIG for a future conference or if enough interest, its own small event.

[Dylan Tweney]

I am sorry I missed it. I *love* the idea of a KidCamp and would have brought my daughter if I'd known there would be something interesting to her. Family time is exactly why I wasn't there, so I second the comments about making an event like this family friendly, esp if it falls on a weekend. Maybe we could contribute some Wired GeekDad sessions at the next one?

[Kevin Marks]

I'm sad I missed this due to a previously-booked family holiday. One thought on the demo session is the 'speed-geeking' model, where you have n presenters, divide the audience into n groups, and have them rotate round every 5 mins so you get a series of small group presentations (with some conversation, Q&A) instead of a whole-audience listen in turn model.

[Liz Henry]

Ross! You party animal.

I love the idea of having more kid-focused sessions. With a bit more lead time, or volunteer leaders, we could have space for people to sign up to do kids' activities.

For any future unconferences or BarCamps I'm at, I'll suggest we have a kids' track. Then it will be less like "babysitting" and more like getting to go off and do a creative activity.

The SXSWi space with the huge pile of legos was great, and worked well -- but structuring it just a tiny bit more would work better!

Infants and younger toddlers pose a bit of a different problem that has to be more of a social space and that allows for more noise... Plus, removing the choking hazards, etc.

Ross, I also agree with your idea of the need for a living map. We were just talking about that on my blog -- some kind of whiteboard wiki hardware, or at the least, a kludge, something like photos of the schedule uploaded every 15 minutes. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

[Liz Henry]

Oh and one more thing about the kids' room! One of my son's favorite parts of BarCamp was when he realized that he could do mirror writing on the office window, and walk around and see it appear correctly. A simple experience in some ways, but magic and education to a 7 year old.

[Tara Hunt]

Great post, Ross. Some corrections on actual stats:

105 sponsors (not 1,000! OMG...that sounds like we raised 300,000 dollars!)
564 signed in the first day
240 sandwiches eaten the second day (about half of those were in attendance for the first time in the two days)
est. 675 people stopped by over the weekend

Other good stats:

1828 photos on Flickr
384 Blog posts on Technorati
92 sessions over all

The crowdvine site participation ALMOST outgrew the FOOCamp participation, too. I still haven't counted the messages on the backchannel.

[Nancy White]

Belatedly thanks for sharing out the lessons. Great, useful stuff. I'd add that much of it is relevant to all kinds of gatherings that want to scale. I look at Burning Man as another set of patterns that can be explored for scaling up and including more (people, elements of the community, etc.) wisely in an event or gathering. (The wisely part of it is important. Not size for just size's or growth's sake!)

Thanks

Nancy