Ludwig Wendzich Intuitive design straight from Auckland, NZ.

This is the second time I’m writing this. Expressing Engine doesn’t have an auto-save feature. Officially ticked off.

Today we held Barcamp Auckland 2. Back, bigger and better! I think we lived up to that promise, at least I hope we did. The event was held at Botany Downs Secondary College, like last year, a perfect place to hold a Barcamp. Not only did we have the great food, great t-shirts, free water, awesome Twitterscreens and free wifi from last year but we had an Ace up our sleeves, Barcamp App and were dealt a couple of surprise Jokers! Not understanding why I carried on that card-related extended metaphor. The event started of with the alarm going off (if you remember last time it went off during the last session) getting it out of the way quickly.

Please tag your photos with #barcampauckland2 and #bca2 and try to add them to our Flickr Group.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Thank you to those who made this event possible, our main sponsors: Microsoft, Shift, Telecom, webstock and Developer’s Inc, supported by Userfaction.com, EON Foundation and Serendipity IT.

Planning

Get sponsorship for this year’s event was a lot easier than year! I believe that’s because we have built a reputable brand around Barcamp, one companies want to be associated with and support. I believe that companies have realised the potential of supporting the communities around them but I also think a major concern from last year has been addressed. This whole thing is organized by a (then 16) now 17 year old kid. I believe that last year I proved that age isn’t everything and that I am quite capable of successfully running this event.

I think companies like Shift and Microsoft see the the value in supporting local community events like these. Shift is one of the most respected design agencies in the country, not just because of their great work, but also their continued support of community ventures like Barcamp Auckland. Microsoft, who’s generally had a bad reputation with the web community due to their extended neglect of their Internet Explorer product (between IE6 and IE7) also see the value in supporting these events. Microsoft builds goodwill among web developers, showing them they care and are willing to help. People like Nigel Parker at Microsoft make the Redmond Giant seem more human, seem friendly and approachable even.

T-shirts, Lanyards and Plastic Badge Sleeves. We were hoping to give some other talented illustrator the opportunity to design the t-shirt this year but noone stepped up when I pleaded on Twitter. Matthew Allen stepped up once more, even though he was weighed down by a heavy work load, and produced a beautifully illustrated design (backed by great philosophies) in record time! We had some communication issues with the company who provided the shirts, lanyards and sleeves. I bought blue lanyards. Received white and black. I bought the same size plastic sleeves as last year. Got sleeves twice the size. The shirts only commenced printing on Friday (needed to convince the printer to shuffle things around) because I wasn’t reminded I had forgotten to pay the full amount upfront (granted this was my responsibility but really, they knew the deadline was approaching [10th July], it took me calling on the 9th to find out I hadn’t yet paid the full amount upfront. A simple reminder email would have helped save me from a lot of stress!.)

Having a backup. I tried to prevent against possible issues as much as possible this year. I set the deadline for shirts two days early, I got hold of some mobile broadband cards (thanks Telecom!) incase Wifi was painful or it died, I had a whiteboard for the schedule for the first few sessions in case we had some bugs or issues with the BarcampApp (which some Barcampers managed to fix in time, anyway!) Most of the time the backups saved me, or weren’t needed, but sometimes they didn’t exist when I needed it.

I should have:

• printed out lists of attendees incase BarcampApp didn’t work (we had the whiteboard for the scheduling aspect but no lists for the Check-in aspects.)
• acted as a better bridge between Glen and the network admins at school. Really should have had an ethernet port for the VCR box.
• had extra projectors.
• had a mic or spoke louder most of the time
• had a sound-making device for calling attention
• had a different sound-making device to signaling the end of sessions.
• probably done something else, let me know below!

Barcamp App

I talked about the Ace up our sleeves. That Ace is the BarcampApp. Glen Barnes helped me to develop this app (by that I mean he did most develop while I focused on design.) The point? A virtual schedule. Why? 171 people signed up via the form on bca.geek.nz however we limited the event to 140 people, the extra 31 had to go onto a waiting list. About 20 people let me know they couldn’t make it so we could let 20 from the waiting list join the coveted 140 who were allowed to come. So many people expected to come meant we needed more room (an extra whanau block) which meant we had to come up with a way to synchronise the schedule accros all the buildings. We couldnt have people running from one building to the other to check what’s next, nor could we synchronise two whiteboards (logistical nightmare), so I decided to use what we know, the web, to solve the problem. I decided we needed a scheduling app.

What else does it do? We figured we’d build an experience around the schedule, the sessions. We integrate the back-channel, create discussions in context, and aid networking with a directory of attendees. Each attendee would have a profile which shows where the user has participated in discussions and what the person has presented.

The app has a web and iPhone interface. Awesome.

If you have any comments or criticism about the BarcampApp then please let us know in the comments below - we’d like to make it better for next time.

No-shows.

A dissapointing part of Barcamp Auckland was the amount of no shows. Numbers aren’t in yet (Glen will be crunching them soon) but my dad said he counted about a 100 people at some point. That’s around 30 people more than last year (in 2007; officially 72 attendees, although on the day we counted up to 80 - some may not have checked in if they arrived late) so I‘ll play it safe and say 25% growth (from 80 to 100.) This is great, if we limited the event to 100, or even 120 people. However we raised enough funds for 140 people! We had about 11 people who couldn’t come because they were on a waiting list (still) and we ended up with 40 no shows. We should have had much larger growth than 25%, 40-50% at least.

I appreciate those who let me know they wouldn’t be able to make the event (your spots were given to people on the waiting list) but slightly disappointed at those who didn’t show up (and didn’t even let me know they weren’t coming.) Lessons learnt though, although there is a slight chance that we may not have enough t-shirts and food next time, we will overbook the next one. Please let me know about numbers, how many people do you think is a good number to have present on the day? Did you prefer the smaller 80 or like rounder 80. Maybe you think 140 people is a good number to be aiming for, or you think big and think we should aim for 200! Let me know, in the comments.

Conclusion

Barcamp Auckland 2 was amazing. The day ran well (yea we had some glitches but which event doesn’t) and the people got stuck in really well. In the morning I was starting to get a little worried when we only had one presentation up for the first timeslot on the whiteboard but after a few minutes a few more joined the first and I relaxed a bit.