Lessons Learned while Planning an Unconference

Mobicamp was an extremely gratifying experience. I had a great time at the event but also learned a lot about planning such things. This is an abridged how to, a list of pitfalls, and a list of things I would likely change for Mobicamp 2010. Look for another post in the near future regarding some of sessions given at Mobicamp.

There are, of course, plenty of things to consider when planning an unconference:

• Attendee limit
• Venue
• Food/Snacks/Drinks
• Design/Web presence/T-Shirts
• Charging Attendees
• Sponsorship
• Theme and Audience
• and more that I’m likely forgetting

Attendee Limit:

Event size impacts everything on the list above. Figure this out up front and realize that the time to plan the event and the cost both go up as you increase the number of attendees. I suggest keeping the event reasonably small if you want folks to interact with a lot of others. In my opinion, the sweet spot is in the 70-100 person range.

Venue:

Finding a venue was reasonably easy for me thanks to the wonderful resources in Atlanta. I spoke to @lance at the ATDC and asked if the ATDC could offer space for the event. They were able to assist and the cost was very reasonable. If that had fallen through, @billcutts at GTRI was more than willing to assist. Many thanks to both. It’s not always the case that resources like this are easily available. Often venues are the most expensive part of events like Mobicamp. Shop around for quotes (you can try hotels, universities, tap into your network, etc.). If you’re going for a BarCamp, you probably need several small rooms.

Food/Snacks/Drinks:

Once you’ve figured out the number of spots you will make available at your event, shop around for prices on feeding that many people. Talk to managers at restaurants about their catering options. In my case, food and drink was a around $8.33 per person. I accounted for approximately 120 people with a guess that 70% would actually show up.

Design/Web presence/T-Shirts:

Find a good designer and ask for a logo and T-shirt design. If you’re not savvy enough to put up a webpage yourself, tap into your network. A wiki or blog works fine. You also need a way for attendees to sign up. I didn’t ask for T-shirt sizes, which made guessing a bit difficult. I’m asking for T-shirt sizes next year. I used Kingscreen.com, which worked out very well (they were able to print a two color gradient, etc. without issues). Shirts seem to range from about $6 to about $10 each. Again, shop around and find a good deal.

Charging Attendees:

Mobicamp was free. My rationale was more people would attend if there was not a cost barrier to entry. I believe I was wrong. If there is a modest fee, say on the order of $20, attendees have a vested interest and want to get their money’s worth. This makes them much more likely to attend. Since unconferences depend on attendees for content, it’s more important to make sure people actually make it to the event than other conferences. This is something else I will change if I host Mobicamp 2010.

Sponsorship:

If you’ve gotten this far, you have a good idea of how much your event will cost. Get in touch with evangelists from companies to see if they can help out. I was fortunate to have several wonderful sponsors for Mobicamp. In fact, none were pushy and interestingly the largest companies were the most easy going about things. I recommend creating a single “sponsorship package” — a list of stuff companies get in return for sponsoring your event. Make it worth your sponsors’ while and treat them equally. I recommend going with a slightly higher sponsorship amount and a handful of sponsors instead of many many small sponsors. It’s also a good idea to keep sponsors relevant to the event, although this generally a nonissue (usually only sponsors with some vested interest will offer).

Theme and Audience:

Having a theme helps keep your event’s topics focused. If the theme is too broad, users may walk away feeling O_o; if the theme is too specific, then you may not have enough users signed up to provide an event’s worth of content. Mobicamp was originally intended to be an event for mobile developers and students. This was broadened a bit, on advice from a friend, to include more business-y topics like marketing, etc. This absolutely added to the event because many relevant sessions about things like experiences with certain App Stores, new technology and its real world impact on users, what platforms to target, etc. that may not have come up otherwise. I highly recommend asking attendees for their mandatory session topic on signup. A major value proposition of unconferences is the sharing of information by all attendees. This is cut short if half or more of the attendees decide to stay in their “comfort zone” and listen instead. Make people step out of their comfort zone and watch amazing dialog begin to emerge.

Mobicamp 2010:

Although Mobicamp went very well, there are a number of changes I’d like to make next year. As you might have guessed, there will be a hard limit on the number of spots and I’m going to charge a modest entry fee. I will also make contributing by giving a session mandatory, ask people to send their topics early on and pick time slots based on the expected length of their talk (at the event). Topic focus was not an issue At Mobicamp, save one or two sessions.

Thanks to all of my friends who volunteered their time to contribute to and run Mobicamp.