FUDCon organization process

Draft Documents
These are documents in a draft state, you rely upon them at your own risk.

This page is written for FUDCon organizers who have been accepted to run a FUDCon through the FUDCon bid process and documents things FUDCon organizers should think about when putting together an event. It covers the common style of FUDCon, which includes one or more days of group hackfest sessions as well as one or more days of BarCamp-style technical sessions.

Starting point: What you should already have

If you've been through the FUDCon bid process, you should already have the following:

• At least 6 months to plan (absolute minimum 4).
• An event owner/organizer (you!) who expects to spend approximately 15 hours a week on FUDCon tasks until 1 month prior to the event, when that number will jump to approximately 25 hours per week. FIXME -- word better
• Dates for FUDCon
• A venue for the FUDCon event itself
• A hotel location
• A general budget-availability quote from one or more sources (usually this will be Red Hat's Community Architecture team), and a contact person for obtaining access to said budget

FUDcon Team General Planning Schedule

Time	Local team	Planning team	Budget/resources team
FUDCon bid process begins 12 mo	Research
Submits bid	Submit bid	Receives bids
Submission process ends 10.5 mo		Bids reviewed
Decision 10 mo		execute on fudpub, hotel, location paperwork and sign deals. Reserve specific space (rooms, etc.) at the location.
FUDCon Planning FAD 10-9 mo	Investigate possibility of group airline discount.	Set up web presence (wiki) for event. Schedule regular meetings. Get all planners on fudcon-planning and start using that list. Announce location to Fedora channels. Ensure roles and responsibilities are clearly assigned for planning team. Get Marketing started on the event.	Have a rough budget ("CommArch sets aside $X for this FUDCon") and a contact for that budget (Max). Marketing team begins event marketing, very lightweight.
5 mo	Find lunch caterer. Arrange transit-in-city if applicable (if special "conference train passes" are offered, etc.) Place food orders for lunch at FUDCon and for FUDPub. Post local advertising, do local word of mouth. Make list of local attractions and food for hotel handout later on. Arrange for housing and feed of ponies.	Open registration. Begin sponsorship process; set cutoff date for sponsorship that is more than 1 month in advance of the event. Check in with Marketing about event marketing plan. Place requests with Design team for shirt, sign, and badge designs. Open hotel pairing signup (on the wiki). Open hackfests, usertrack, and sessions "CFP" discussion. Begin user track planning. Find reliable pony breeder, select pony.	Pay sponsorships as they come up. Pay FUDPub deposit, and other deposits as needed. Design team makes shirt, sign, and badge designs. Marketing does a push to local people/events. Ensure budget for pony is sufficient to sustain pony for next fiscal year.
1 mo	Order shirts and swag after the people-who-get-swag cutoff number is reached (so you know sizes). Contact Design team to turn map and list of restaurants and local attractions and event details into a nicely laid-out hotel handout.	First major review of registration list (the swag-limit should have been hit by this point). * Look at the balance of attendees and make sure there aren't any gaping holes in terms of the types of people we want to attend. Sponsorship should have been closed at least a week or two prior to the one-month mark. Get all attendees on a fudcon-attendees mailing list and welcome them there. Kickoff FUDCon live planning (separate team). Revise docs so that walk-in registration is now marked as a clearer option and it's obvious that the swag cutoff has been reached. Close user track planning (even if it's Barcamp-style, have slot times and enough detail to start advertising the user track to users). Locally publicize the user track; contact Marketing team for help. Confirm hotel pairings are worked-out for sponsored attendees, and reminderping non-sponsored hotel attendees to check their own.	First detailed budget summary due to the planning mailing list at this point (ideally they will have started earlier, on a weekly basis). Pay for food (lunch). Design team generates nametag pdfs for registrants so far.
2 wk	Confirm transit-within-city availability and any special arrangements necessary. Confirm food for FUDpub and FUDCon lunch, particularly that vegetarian/vegan options are sufficient.	Confirm hackfest sessions that are set so far. Confirm transit-to-FUDCon is set for all sponsored attendees. Get a barcamp leader (the person who stands up and explains Barcamp, drives the schedule creation on-site, etc.) Get people to start discussion and refinement on sessions proposed to date. Make materials and handouts needed for the user track. Handle last minute hotel arrangements as needed. Begin sending regular event updates to the attendees list if you haven't already. Ping sponsors and pre-emptively thank them.	Continue budget summaries. Confirm the arrival of food, swag, location, etc.
1 wk	Answer questions about location on attendees list as needed. Buffer sleep.	Last minute hotel arrangements continued. Updates to attendees mailing list continued. Buffer any last-minute conversation on the attendees list as needed.	Make sure we have swag and badge holders arriving at the event. Design generates remaining nametags so far so we have files to print for nametags for all attendees registered at this point; they should also have the hotel handout done by this point.
2 days	Print nametags, signs, and the hotel handout. Give hotel handout to hotel. Sleep a lot, and be contactable only by the (remote) remainder of the event team whenever possible to avoid becoming overwhelmed.	Continue to buffer last-minute requests on the attendees list and try to make sure local planners don't get overloaded. Start being (literally) on-call - begin to have someone contactable by phone and someone contactable by IRC at all times, in shifts.	Make sure stuff is delivered and paid-for.
1 day	Post signs, setup wifi and power. Sleep.	Arrive at the location city (if remote). Start FUDCon live; migrate on-callness to FUDCon live. Test hotel handout (if coming from out of town).	Make sure stuff is delivered and paid-for.
Morning-of	Show non-local planners to location early. Try to rest.	Make barcamp grid. Ensure FUDCon live is still up and running and ready for the load. Be on-call for the day. Open feedback surveys as needed.	Make sure stuff is delivered and paid for.
Right afterwards	Local thank-yous. Make sure location is cleaned up. Post-mortem meeting.	Wrap-up documentation (FUDCon Live). Publicize FUDCon live doc results. Thank everyone. Open/publicize feedback surveys as needed. Revise planning docs for the next round.	File receipts and close the books.

Venue Setup

Welcome/Information Table

Needed:

• Space to lay out (in at least one line, if not two or more):
  • Badges
  • Information kits (maps, wireless network information, lunch details, etc) you are handing out
  • Any swag you are making available
  • Shirts, at least one pile per size+style
• Power strips for laptops
• Wired access (temporary switches, etc) for backup to wireless access

Session Rooms

Barcamp

• Video projector with VGA (15-pin sub-d input)
• Whiteboard with pens or chalkboard with chalk
  • Optional but recommended: wired network access for presenter, in case wireless is swamped
• Board erasers
• Seating - various size rooms are fine, from 20 to 120
• Wi-Fi access
• Podium sign - place on podium/console or wall behind speaker so that pictures that end up on blogs/Flickr, blogs, etc as well as videos show the event name and year. 11x17" filled with the event logo is appropriate.

Hackfest

• Small tables with 6-10 seats (round works well), small number of
• Good network access -- consider wired as a backup/compliment to wireless
• Whiteboards or easel pads

Hotel

• Map/information at front desk
• Hack room with network access and sign

Signage

Need:

• Outdoor signs advertising the event (so attendees know they're in the right spot)
• Signs to venue from parking and from transit
• Signs at venue to direct people from the entrances most likely to be used to the information/registration table
• Signs identifying room ranges and directions (Room A-E <- / Room F-H 5-8 ^ )
• Room signs to identify room (consider ignoring the existing room numbers and assigning new ones, using a numbering/lettering scheme that can't be confused with the existing one -- for eexample, Room A, B, C ... H, vs. T1106, T1109, T1113, ... T2176)
• Room signs for non-session locations (lounge, registration/information, lunch, To FUDpub)
• Session schedules - blank grid that can be filled in with the session schedule for the room once the barcamp session is finalized, and then attached to each session room door)
• Signs advertising events (FUDpub, side trips)

Badges

Include on the padge:

1. The event logo
2. Attendee name (in a large font size)
3. Comment filled in by user (e.g., IRC nick, area of involvement, company, hiring _____)
4. T-shirt size (use small font size, light coloured, or print on back to avoid embarassing anyone)
5. Swag/non-swag status (e.g., eligible for lunch) - can be indicated by different-colour backgrounds
6. Include any other personal-tied information on back, such as an individual wireless password

The gLabels package is a good tool for designing badges and merging in text from a CSV file. It can also shrink the font size to fit the space available for a field.

Design (for badges, signs, handouts, and so forth)

The design team is very helpful in designing preparing materials. However, there will undoubtedly be situations where the local team will need to produce materials on their own.

When designing for FUDcon, consistently:

1. Use the Fedora and FUDcon event logos according to the Logo Usage Guidelines
2. Use the MgOpen Modata font (from the mgopen-modata-fonts package). These fonts will work in Inkscape, OpenOffice.org, Gimp, and most other applications.

Meetings

• Frequency:
  • More than 6 months in advance: monthly
  • 6-2 months in advance: bi-weekly
  • 1 months-2 weeks in advance: weekly
  • Last 2 weeks: daily

• Use #fudcon-planning or telephone conference as appropriate.

Current resources

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_design
• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/Organization