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Volunteers
Worked well
Needs improvement
- have a volunteers (announce-style) mailing list - Kat
- get volunteer info out way earlier, even if the timetable is not available - Kat
- a little fewer t-shirts, also take into account the sizes that the organisers wear - Kat
- maybe try to let volunteers know if they're useful a day early - Olivier
Badges (name tags)
Worked well
- writing own namebadges was fun! - Kat
use colours to differentiate newcomers and the others is a good idea. - JonathanKang
Needs improvement
name badges were too large to fit into woman pockets, had to take bag everywhere
- Kat lanyards too jingly - Kat, AllanDay, Ben, JonathanKang
Schedule
Worked well
- lots of unconference slots - Kat, Olea, Ben
Needs improvement
invited talks were not differentiated from talks selected by the presentations team
- Kat, Ben
Social Events
Worked well
Needs improvement
- Solicitation for photos was extreme (e.g. the raffel) – Ben
- evening schedule too busy, need more down time for old farts - Kat, Ben
- Having lots of events is nice, it's just 3 days, otherwise it's hard for newcomers to meet more new people as old timers just hang out in small groups otherwise. - Olivier
- At least one person told me that they liked having an activity organised for every night, can't remember who it was though - Allan
- Having a defined time in evenings where it is "acceptable" to leave or when people need to move elsewhere may help – Ben
Workshops/BoFs
Worked well
Needs improvement
venue closed too early (17h) - Kat, Olea, Ben, JonathanKang
Merchandise
Worked well
Needs improvement
- The T-Shirts shrank a lot in the wash (was "GILDAN Softstyle" "Ring Spun") – Ben
- GNOME T-Shirt design was rather large on the straight fit t-shirts – Ben
General
Worked well
- House/team points
- Houses/teams and points were a good idea! - Alexandre
Needs improvement
A map with the important locations would have been useful (including e.g. the check-in for the student accommodation) – Ben, Olea, JonathanKang
- We should try to have live streaming of talks again – Ben
- House colors need to be unambiguous. Turquoise and Green got confused by many. - Alexandre
- Speakers need to be more involved with this. Many just didn’t play along (could be that they forgot, or weren’t aware). - Alexandre
- Need more ways to earn points. Volunteering could be taken into account. What else? - Alexandre
- Good to not have a closed women's dinner; announcement was poor and rumor is that people didn't go because they did not know it was opened -- Ben
Other comments
AllanDay - some thoughts from someone who helped to organise GUADEC 2017:
- Things that went well:
- Having a selection of t-shirts seemed to encourage people to buy them (sold around 180 shirts this year, compared to 65 the previous year), and it was great seeing people walking around in GNOME t-shirts.
- The banners and posters helped to identify the conference and were a good way of making sponsorship more prominent. I was glad that we had the banners visible for the group photo, for this reason.
- I really liked the larger format of the badges - they looked better than in previous years.
- Ben: In this and previous years the area for the name was around A8. More prominent were the GUADEC logo and other parts on the badge though. Also, hard to compare with the handwriting which effectively meant much larger fonts in a lot of cases.
- Free waterbottles worked really well and helped to reduce plastic waste. They worked because there were water fountains at the venue.
- People seemed to really like the fact that the food at the anniversary party was a mix of vegetarian and vegan. It also seemed to make catering easier.
- Things that could have been done better:
- It was tricky knowing how many people to book social events for, and in at least one case we overbooked. Things that could have helped with this:
- Stress that people should let us know if they're unable to attend, provide instructions how to unregister.
- Allow people to state which days they will attend when they register.
- There was a bit of confusion from session chairs about when each talk should finish. For example, talks which didn't have a break before them were supposed to finish five minutes early to allow people to switch rooms. Things we could do to address this in future:
- Have a more detailed schedule which includes interchange time, which is provided to session chairs.
- Make sure that session chairs are provided with written instructions.
- One member of the press attended and was uncertain whether he was expected to pay the registration fee. He also wanted a badge that said press or his organisation on it.
- It would have been good to emphasise that people could attend for one or two days, and possibly to have had the registration form and fee reflect this.
- We ended up spending most of the first morning getting the merchandise stall set up. It would have been better to have done this the day before the conference started.
- Having the football match as a separate event on the last day, when other events were happening, didn't seem to be the best - a lot of people were tired or busy with other things.
- We could have done with a bit more time for the AGM.
- It was tricky knowing how many people to book social events for, and in at least one case we overbooked. Things that could have helped with this:
Fixable things mentioned
An event web map is easy to do (with Google MyMaps or some embedable OSM), Olea
- I had actually one made using geojson already, we simply would have needed to make that available (screenshot and kml/geojson download)
- This a FLOSS organisation, lets not use propriatary (Google) map data when the Free alternative (OSM) is usually better anyway - Kat
- At the main website add a link to a wiki space where organizers and attendants could add any kind of information they found related, Olea