barcamp-cork

09 Nov, 2008

Organising a *Camp

Posted by: conor In: Afterwards

If you attended BarCamp Cork and thought you’d like to run an unconference yourself, below is just a quick idea of what is involved.

  • Try to have 2 and preferably 3 organisers. It’s possible as a solo run but can add to your stress level.
  • The venue is the number 1 priority. If you can get it for free then you’ve done 75% of the work already. EI, Howard Holdings, Integris and Damien came up trumps with Webworks for BarCamp Cork.
  • A blog. Get it up there day 1 and start telling people what you are doing.
  • Sponsors. You only need a small few to cover the basics. How much do you think BarCamp cost to arrange? What would you say if I told you that BarCamp Cork 2 with 110+ plus people at a day long free conference cost less than €800 in total? 
  • Why so little?
    • You don’t need t-shirts
    • You don’t need banners
    • You don’t need printed badges
    • All poster printing should be done on your 8 year old inkjet at home
    • Beg, borrow or steal a Musgraves card and pay pennies for
    •  
      • plates
      • cups
      • plastic cutlery
      • fizzy/flat water
      • markers/whitetack/name-stickers/post-its
      • etc
  • Pizza and donuts will feed most people (unless it’s a FoodCamp ;-) ). Bulk ordering from a local place should get you up to 20% discount
  • Mics are expensive but often necessary (€120 per setup)
  • Borrow projectors. We had offers of 5 but you may have to order screens for them.
  • Most venues won’t have enough chairs (Webworks did luckily). They cost approx €1.80 each
  • If the event is even remotely geeky, you will need wifi.
That’s it. Just make sure as many people as possible know about your event and are motivated to talk at it and turn up. Get that buzz going by whatever means you can. We’re lucky with BarCamps in general here that so many people are into them and like to blog about them. 
The no-show rate at BarCamp Cork 1 was over 20%. It was closer to 5% at last weekend’s event. No-shows are a pain in the arse but a fact of life and you can never accurately predict how much stuff to order.
As far as venues are concerned, we were discusing it last Saturday at post-BarCamp dinner. Some ideas that came up include racetracks, dogtracks, GAA clubs. Any other ones that might work? 
After Julian’s wine-tasting session, I have to think that a WineCamp/BeerCamp or FoodCamp would be a roaring success (particularly in West Cork).
What *Camps would you like to see next?

6 Responses to "Organising a *Camp"

1 | Jamie Lawrence

November 9th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

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Wouldn’t it be great if http://www.barcamp.ie/ became a hub for all barcamps? It wouldn’t have to host the sites, just point to them and provide an RSS feed.

Any idea who owns/manages this domain?

2 | conor

November 9th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

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I’m pretty sure Michele in Blacknight (who kindly host this blog too) is responsible for barcamp.ie and it used to do exactly what you describe!

3 | Joe Drumgoole

November 12th, 2008 at 1:07 am

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Conor,

Great post with useful information. I love the core message, its about people! Don’t sweat the teeshirts.

I only got to hang out for 2 hours but it was great stuff and left me wanting more.

Joe.

4 | Emma Persky

November 16th, 2008 at 2:02 am

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Hi Conor, really interesting post. Love that you went totally old school for BarCampCork2 without all of the fancy attachments for barcamp that many have. On the other hand sometimes you need camps that give you free t-shirts!

Really impressed that you ran for just €800.

Can’t wait for the next one!

5 | conor

November 16th, 2008 at 9:28 am

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Thanks Emma. Hoping we can keep the focus on the “Unconference” aspect rather than the free aspect.

One important point I missed above is that it was organised from start to finish in 4 weeks. I know the very first BarCamp was arranged in a week and I wanted to see if we could get back to that lightweight way of doing things.

If people can see how easy it is to put a BarCamp together then we will hopefully see many more happening. They don’t all have to be 100+ people events. I’d love to go to ones with maybe 20-30 people looking to learn off each other.

6 | And we have a blog! - TeenCamp Ireland

December 10th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

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[...] to Conor’s post-BarCamp Cork writeup, getting a blog is task [...]

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BarCamp Cork II on November 1st in Webworks is the follow-up to Ireland's first BarCamp held in 2006. It's about people getting together, sharing ideas, learning from each other and finding like-minds.

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