Thoughts on running a (software engineering) conference
February 9, 2010
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Get a good night’s sleep the day before the conference. If you’re doing a good job you will barely sleep at all for the rest of the conference.
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Naps in hotel lobbies are a great way to spend superfluous lunch hours.
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It sucks to cut off a great speaker because you’re running out of time. Try to massage the time limit into them.
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Get everything that needs to be printed finished at least a week before the conference start (unless you possess some deep love of frantic all nighters).
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The time in between talks is not the best opportunity to expose people to your taste in indie electro pop anarcho vegan grindcore. Keep it simple. (D’oh!)
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Competent and responsible people are worth their weight in gold. Knowing someone’s got your back is an awesome feeling.
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What comes off as an asshole over email can easily turn out to be shy and extremely busy in person. Mind you, I still think, uh, what Sirius Black once said still applies.
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People have an absolutely astonishing capacity to not respond to emails. This was the most stunning thing I learned while organizing the conference. That was probably naïve of me.
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Emails are informationally porous. No one actually bothers to read them. If there is anything they need to remember, say it within two or three paragraphs.
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Distribute lots of power bars throughout the conference. I learned this at FutureRuby and RubyFringe but completely forgot come D-Day.
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Hotel internet just sucks. It’s almost worth selecting a venue on this basis alone.
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Nerds need to be coached into any social event. You have to force them to interact in some way. I occasionally still suffer from nerd-social-paralysis, but it’s easy to forget when you’ve been wired for a week, constantly talking to dozens of people.
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On a related note, students find $7 drinks morally obscene.
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If you’re giving away stuff in a raffle, write the damn randomizing script ahead of time.
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Always get your speaker’s contact details and travel information beforehand. Due to the efforts of my excellent coworkers, the only time I had to worry was when a speaker checked in a day late.
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The day after the conference can be brutal for some people. You go from being relatively important and receiving dozens of emails a day to a nobody the second the conference is over. After you physically recover, schedule some pleasant evenings with the friends you’ve been neglecting.
