Anything we can do RE: a facebook app?

Pair up 1 to 1 with the contact you’ll bring. Adds box on profile saying “X is brining Y to BarCamp Galway” etc.

How’s that sound? Any adaptation’s?

Worth considering, but I’d be thinking that the first iteration should fall under the KISS principle - Keep It Simple Stoopid - the easier and cleaner the better…

Keeping it all in one system (we stay up if Facebook goes down) and also not requiring people to have an account might be better to attract non-techies… We could allow people to ‘invite’ their friends when they sign-up, that way we could trace the accepted invites back to the inviter. But do we really need that level of info? Not Sure.

I think purely being able to sign yourself up using a simple form would be the easiest way to go. Require Name & email address, optional for website (same as most blog comments) and have a simple captcha (such as add 5 + 5) to stop bots.

Allow people to fill in a 2nd form to invite their friends to BarCamp, require sender’s mail address, address(es) of friends and room for a personal message (optional).

Robin I would have to strongly disagree: this would require prospective attendees to have a Facebook or register for one. The registration process would be even more convoluted than it already is.
Elly, send me your requirements, I’ll knock an app to do that. I’ll get in touch with Michele for the hosting.

There are a bunch of people I’d like to invite… they aren’t scared of tech but KISS *really* applies to them.

Wiki… great techie idea. Could GrannyMar sign up unaided the first time she used one?
Go with a form and reminders closer to the date.

Having said that… the invites in FaceBook are an idea to get interest, but everyone is not in facebook despite their best attempts.

Ooh ooh, this gives me an idea for a CodeJam! I’ll “run it up the flag………..”

Separately, I think Glenn Jones still has an open invitation for all BarCamps to make use of their backnetwork system for free like we did for BarCampIreland1

http://www.backnetwork.com

I think the wiki thing is a bet of a red herring. For Barcamp Galway you can register *either* by adding your name to the wiki or by emailing barcampgalway at gmail.com. This is clearly stated on the “How do I sign up?” part of the Barcamp Galway webpage. Regarding keeping it simple, there is nothing simpler than email.

I don’t believe there is a huge amount of people out there who are not currently signing up to attend who would suddenly change their mind if we had a web form instead.

@Aidan - I agree, but the simple fact that we can’t even publish a mail to link barcampgalway@gmail.com but type it with spaces shows the type of world we live in. Also removes the human interaction portion of someone having to receive that mail and then interact with the wiki and update it - removes hassle for organisers.

Don’t get me wrong, you guys have done a great job, but IMHO we could make it easier and better in the future…

@Olivier - I’ll take you up on that. I’m in Blacknight’s offices today, all squared with Michele, he’s expecting your call after we’ve talked. Merci beaucoup!

Also Barcamp is supposed to be an unconference. The wiki facilitates self organization involving lots of different people. If you take that away and move to a centralized system where control rests with a restricted few you lose that. Justin Mason makes a good point on Damiens post “if you get rid of the wiki, make it less geeky, and so on, it’s not a Bar Camp anymore”.

OK, but at each BarCamp to date, the organisers have selected the venue, organised the food, equipment and sponsorship and been responsible for the publicity (blog). Aside from that there’s really only the attendees, talks and date to settle.

The date can be decided by commenting on the blog (participation), the attendees can sign themselves up (no difference if it’s a wiki, email address or sign-up form) and the talks again can sign themselves up. Order of the talks is decided on the day by the attendees at the start of the session and adjusted through the day as needed.

Each time a BarCamp has occurred the same line of chatter / complaints has come up about the fact that an alternative to a wiki is needed for non-geeks. There seem to be two schools of people around, those that want the pure, original, unconference BarCamps full of tech talks; and those that want it to be a ‘gathering of minds’ where any talk goes, tech or not.

If you want your BarCamp to be mainly techie, then stick with the wiki - but even from looking at the Galway one, you are making it harder for people by asking them to edit the wiki and then also send their email address in to you - which from BarCamp Dublin I remember that practically no-one did. What if you needed to have a last minute change of venue or start time? How would you let everyone know?

I’m simply proposing a simpler method of collating the data, one that anyone can use. By using Moveable Type on the sub domains (e.g. galway.barcamp.ie) you can set the permissions in a way as to let anyone sign up as a contributor if they so wish and edit the pages to add or delete information. It’s not necessary to have a wiki to have an unconference, there are other solutions if you think outside the box that would facilitate ease of use.

Also, I just looked through every historical version of the BarCamp Galway wiki page and compared it to the previous, the self-organization of the users has only been on adding themselves into the attendees, talks and proposed talks sections, not one user outside the organising team has added any other information to the page. And at least one third of the users took two attempts to add themselves correctly to either the talks or attendees section. Says just how simple and user-friendly wikis are, doesn’t it?

Woah - I’m not suggesting you ONLY use Facebook. Bad idea. (note: I’m a big sceptic of Facebook!)

I’m talking about using it as a marketing tool where you can pick from your friends who you’ll bring IF you use Facebook already (and so does your mate).

Ah OK Robin - certainly no problem in using it as a marketing / publicity tool, may have mis-read your original comment! :-0

Red Herring my hole Aidan, there was nothing on the BarCamp Blog yesterday about registering by email or on the Wiki. I checked after you said there was an email option.

History on the wiki agrees with Damien - sorry Aidan!

@Aidan, can I point out then that BarCamp Galway is not an unconference, like all previous BarCamps. Were it an unconference then surely you would not be looking for people to give talks but to facilitate discussions like a true unconference?

Now, now Damien, stop poking Aidan with that stick!

Oh yes and big up to Ollie “Olivier” Ahern for building the new friendly reg system. Brilliant suggestion Elly and nice one on making it happen O!

@Damien - see Twitter - Aidan and Olivier are going to collab to build it along with Niall from Blacknight. Great to see we can all get along and make things work better.

My Twitter is all fucked up. Big up to Aidan and Niall too! Will update orig blog post now.

[...] was reading a post from Damien Mulley recently about why he has decided not to go to BarCemp Galway - in fact it was [...]

[...] the traditional wiki format completely. It never worked on the previous camps, and I’ve bitched about it at length before. They have a lovely sign-up system, where people can input the details of the talks / panels [...]