Czajkowski

Things to do and not do when organising an event a follow up thoughts and reviews to my previous article. Why… well as I said before the list was not complete nor was it a bible. However after taking part in another event I helped to organise I’ve come up with a few more things to bear in mind when running an event. These mostly appertain to the day of the event:

• Have the presenting laptop all set up with a separate login with all of the presentations on it.
• Sticky point, dealing with speakers can sometimes be a lot of hassle, get all speakers to use the one laptop, it’s set up and works with the projector. Unplugging and plugging in another one causes unnecessary time wasting for all those involved.
• Get all presentations a week in advance, I asked for them 2 days in advance and got all bar 2, one of which as the guy was travelling and I knew this. The other I got on the day of the event. In future I’d ask for them a week in advance, and if you don’t get it, pull the person.  Simple as, if one person can do it, so can everyone.
• It may be a case that you have to pull rank with another organiser if things are not running as they should be. Yes it would be nice to let the day just flow, yes it would be nice to let folks just do what they want, but then crazyness happens, and nothing runs well.
• Have a person sitting in the audience who will hold up a car with 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 1 minutes to go. It is necessary to keep time under control, and again some speakers will get the knickers in a twist at being told to shut up and get off the stage as the next speaker is due on. s
• If you are renting a venue give it back to the organisation the way you got it. It sounds simple, but you’d be amazed the way people leave their rubbish behind. Make sure everyone leaves with you, locks up and goes with you. If you leave folks behind you have no way of making sure the place is locked up and left in the correct order.

Again, by no means is it complete. It’s just a few ideas that came to me post SFD.

Last weekend was Ubuntu-ie first major event. We held Software Freedom Day here in Dublin at the Digital Exchange. At great turn out was had. A lot of familar faces showed up and also a lot of new people came who had read the article in the paper who came along full of enthuasim and an abundance of questions.

The theory behind the day was to inform people, not to make it too technical and all for people to come along ask questions and come away from the day with some food for thought.

We had vaying topics, from how people us OS in their work place, copyright and Open street mapping. There was demo’s and installs going on so people could come along and ask questions and if they had problems with their installs they could get some help if they needed.

It was also an opportunity for Camara to get the word out on what they do. We brought people down to their offices so they could see the work they do, where they normally wouldn’t get a chance to do so.

John Looney

Dermot McNally

Glenn Strong

Paul O’Malley

MacieJ

Camara

Ciaran O’Riordan

I’d like to thank all those who came and helped out on the day. Elevate learning who were so much help. It was a great day, followed onto the Longstone for the evening. I’ve added some photos of the event here. It was a great day, would I do it again, possibly, would I do things differently……….Hell yes, follow up post to follow :p