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From BarcampBangalore

This page is a guide to how a Barcamp is organized, written by current and past organizer(s) of Barcamps in Bangalore. If you have organized one elsewhere, please leave a link below. This page is not yet sufficiently comprehensive.

Some of this material could perhaps be separated into a Barcamp Manifesto, with this page covering the how rather than the why.

[edit] Planning

Despite what the notion of "unconference" suggests, Barcamps take a fair bit of work to organize. The organizing team is ad hoc, comprised of anyone who volunteered and turned up at the initial planning meets. We usually stop taking in new organizers as the event date approaches, as this makes things harder to manage. It takes someone with strong organizing skills to keep the team together. We were fortunate to have Jessica Prabhakar for BCB1 and Kesava Reddy for BCB2 and BCB3. Organizing team members take on specific responsibilities, such as for venue, catering, theme, publicity or sponsor relations.

[edit] Theme

Defining a theme for a Barcamp is a delicate topic, as the event is supposed to be open, with its theme defined by its participants. In practice however, we have found that this weakens the strength of the discussions because no one is sure who else is coming and what will be discussed. Leaving this completely to participants creates a recurring cycle of the same people discussing the same things. As we'd like Barcamp to be an event for cross-pollination of ideas between various groups that do not otherwise have such venues for meeting each other, we've decided (starting with BCB3) to propose a broad theme, identify topics that align with it, and send invites to folks in these domains.

It should be noted here that "invite" is not in the same sense as a regular conference. We make no distinction between speakers and audience. We do not seek sponsorship or offer compensation to invited participants. We do not guarantee them an audience. An invitation to a Barcamp is simply a notice that such an event is being organized, and that we'd like it if they could participate and share their knowledge. The intention is more to spread awareness of Barcamp than to favor certain participants over others.

In future, we may consider liaising with sponsors on behalf of participants traveling from out of Bangalore, but as a matter of principle, will not allow this to mean those sponsors get additional privileges at the event. We do not have the bandwidth to offer this option for BCB3, but willing volunteers are welcome to take the mantle.

[edit] Sponsors

The biggest expenses at a Barcamp are the food and t-shirts. Food is necessary. If participants have to look out for themselves, it'll take their attention away from the event. T-shirts are not as important, but people like having souvenirs and we've so far not had to look too hard for sponsors.

We've been suggested to hold the event at a hotel so everyone can pay for themselves, but this is usually impractical as restaurant tables rarely work for discussions larger than 4-6 people, and even rarer hold enough people to make the event significant enough to attract participants not already familiar with each other. If we're to book an entire hall and collect a food fee at the entrance, it'll require committing to the venue management for a certain minimum number of participants, which puts the burden back on the organizers. Might as well go the full route and seek sponsorship.

Collecting a participation fee to cover basic expenses is a practical idea, but if venue sponsors ask for free entry for their own people, it introduces a participant categorization we'd rather not have. For these reasons, Barcamp Bangalore has always been completely free to all participants, with all expenses covered by sponsors.

As a policy, we do not make any special accommodations for sponsors with regard to participant interaction. They do not get a guaranteed or exclusive audience. Sponsors however do get their name and logo on a banner in all halls, and also on materials (t-shirts, stationery) that they sponsor. A sponsor's representatives may come in as regular participants.

[edit] Links

(Others who have organized Barcamps and shared their notes.)
Fred Stutzman's takeaways from organizing BarCampRDU