Okcon/Documentation

= How to Start =

Timing and Milestones
= Organising Structure =

Organising Committee
Daniel, starting in Februar with up to 3 days a week.

Hauke, from May to OKCon with approx 25 days.

Support from OKF core people, Lucy, Jonathan, Kat and others

Programme Committee
Committe can be found here: http://okcon.org/2011/committee

Volunteers
12 different people + 3 people at the registration / speakers help desk

For the Tracks Volunteers who keep track of time and everything and help with technical equipment necessary.

In the Workshop rooms we had some, but it is not really necessary, as people take care of it themselves.

Overview and coordination can be found here: https://spreadsheets0.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?hl=en_GB&key=tfVvyOQNU1fDB7EjNvNbqgA&hl=en_GB#gid=0

Description of roles and To Dos here: http://okcon.okfnpad.org/todos

Better management / search for volunteers earlier would be a help. Though, as it is a mainly community driven conference most times somebody will help out, if needed. Information sheet for all Talks in Track I and II seemed to be a good idea, including details of speaker and talk as well as length (talk time, QA time...).

Volunteers at the registration / speakers help desk did awesome, the only problem was entrance and registration at the 1st conference day (which is kind of normal, but maybe one could speed up by creating a separate table where people pick up their name badges themselves).

Also, the volunteers remarked that black is not the best choice for the normal badge, as it is hard to visually separate from watches etc.... PICK BRIGHT DIFFERENT COLORS for conference badges.

= Programme =

Speakers
Published here: http://okcon.org/2011/speakers

Submissions
Call for Papers published here: http://okcon.org/2011/cfp

Proceedings
Published here: http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-739/

= Website =

Programme
Programme published here: http://okcon.org/2011/programme

Some kind of system is needed for the management of such a big conference with up to 5 talks parallel. In general I think I spent around 5 working days just editing and porting the programme from the Google Doc sheet.

Some people complained, that the programme was not set earlier. Though, of course, this is understandable there a lot of changes during the process. So will the early publication of a draft programme help? Maybe a little, it may well promote ticket sales as people have a better picture what awaits them on site. The downside is: if you pick a slot for a speaker and change it later he or she will in many cases complain about this. We expericened the process to be *very* responsive all the time. After making some changes / releasing an updated schedule to the website Daniels inbox sometimes got flooded with Emails like: "Why me at this slot" or "Why my parallel to him"...

Early planning and fixing of programme of course helps to keep travel costs low, which is good.

Registration
Registration via http://www.okcon2011.eventbrite.com, also extra Events for the Workshops

The system in general worked not to bad, esp. creation of Speaker Tickets etc or Discount Codes are quite easy to manage.

Big problem was the lack of support for special characters, which produced a UTF 8 error symbol. I requested assistance with this i.e. clearing up the list by Eventbrite staff but they refused and said I had to do it myself. Also, I didn't find a way to export attendees and their Email Adresses to.csv files.

Nice to have would be a plugin or similar to use in Wordpress or other sites, so people don't have to leave our site for registration (they have all information in context, which is nice, also I think it is more trustworthy..).

Pricing is, I guess, OK if special characters and everything would work.

I am currently exploring an alternative @ www.eventbee.org. They claim to have everything we need.Will come bock to this later.

Prices
Early Bird 2 Day Tickets: 40€

Standard Two Day Tickets: 60€ with different discount codes

Early Bird One Day: 20€

Standard One Day Ticket: 30€

Student Tickets: 20€

Crew / Speaker and Special Guest Tickets: 20€

The problem here was, that we didn't have a plan for a) student tickets and b) discount or other promo activities.

In then end it all worked out, but in between there was some fear we won't sell enough tickets. The student tickets have been quite helpful in the end. One day Tickets were only rarely sold, so I think one could scrap them for the next conference. If somebody would really wan't to come only one day and is not able to pay the full price he er she will most likely contact us and we will find a solution. But most people will just by a standard ticket.

Also the discrimination of some speakers proved to be a problem which has to be fixed / avoided next time. The invited speakers got their ticket for free, those who submitted had to buy one. Some of them have been quite pissed about this. As the financial impact is not that big, one could avoid this extra things to deal with for organziers.

= Sponsoring =