> Getting back to some ideas for building communities at conferences, > one idea I had was to designate areas of the venue for specific topic > areas (throughout the event). Basically, it would be like a themed > hallway track. For example, there might be a specific couch or lounge > designated for people interested in boot time. That would be a place to > drop by and check out every once in a while, and listen to conversations > and meet people with similar interests. BOFs are good for getting groups > together, but many people are more comfortable with conversations one-on-one > or in small groups.
I think this is a very good idea. They did this at OSCON at lunch tables. The venue uses large tables that seat 10-12 people, and for each table or group of tables they put up signs saying things like "Python Geeks" or "Managers" or "Kernel Hackers" etc. It was very successful in bringing people together who knew they had at least one thing in common. At a focused conference like ELC/ELCE we could create very specific areas for discussion. > I was at an event once, where a large room was divided into 9 sections, > and each section had a sign indicating a technology area or feature, and > people met, introduced themselves, did a series of lightning talks and > brainstorming. After only 20 minutes or so, an announcement was made and > people > went on to another topic. This was done a few times. It worked really > well for the number we had (about 150 people), but I don't know if it > would scale up to something the size of our current events. This is very much like an "unconference", which can be very dynamic if done properly (and very chaotic if done poorly). There are a number of styles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference). It sounds like you were doing the Lightning Talk style. I attend and help coordinate two of these every year for community management (using something closer to Barcamp style), and can recommend a few folks in the Bay Area who know how it is done. We had over 200 people at the last one in July, and I think going too far beyond that might stretch the point of diminishing returns, but overall it is a very dynamic way to bring people together and stimulate discussions. -- Jeff Osier-Mixon http://jefro.net/blog Yocto Project Community Manager @Intel http://yoctoproject.org _______________________________________________ Celinux-dev mailing list Celinux-dev@lists.celinuxforum.org https://lists.celinuxforum.org/mailman/listinfo/celinux-dev
