[guadec-list] GUADEC 2017 BoF days

[Allan Day <aday gnome org>]

Hi all,

There's been some discussion about the BoF days for this year's GUADEC on IRC today. I wanted to summarise my thoughts here, as a kind of proposal.

Allan

Background

The BoF days are an important part of GUADEC, particularly for established community members who need the time to have meetings and working sessions. However, they can be impenetrable for new community members. There are a variety of reasons for this:

• Terminology: "BoF" is unfamiliar to many.
• Documentation: we typically don't explain what these days are for, or provide guidance on how to get involved.
• Informality: while the flexibility of BoF sessions is useful, it often isn't clear what the purpose of each session is, who is welcome to participate.
  
• Fragmentation: if there isn't a BoF happening that you are interested in, or feel you can contribute to, there isn't a clear way to participate.

In general, there's a lot of assumed knowledge and reliance on established social relationships.

While the majority of people who participate in the BoF days are experienced community members, we do get some new attendees each year who do encounter them. These can include interns or new professional participants. The quicker we can enable these attendees to participate and get contributing, the more GNOME will benefit.

New terminology

I propose that we rebrand the "BoF days" as "unconference days". A potential description might be:

"Three days of informal hacking, working sessions, meetings and group activities, with opportunities for newcomers to get involved in a range of areas including programming, design, marketing, documentation writing and more."

Things we could do

The following is a list of things we could potentially do to address the issues I've outlined above. Not all of them would necessarily work, but it's interesting to consider our options.

1. Run a newcomers workshop on the first unconference day.
2. At the beginning of each unconference day, hold a plenary where people can say what they'd like to work on.
3. End each day with a plenary where people summarise what they've done.
   
4. During the conference days, have a big noticeboard with the evolving unconference schedule on it.
5. Have a noticeboard where people can write topics they're interested in and put names against them.
6. When each unconference session is registered, require that the organiser provides a summary of what will happen at the session, as well as who it is for.
7. Ensure that there's a central hacking space where people can work.
8. Provide ad-hoc signage so that people can advertise what is being worked on where.
9. Allow teams to permanently camp out in particular spots, so members can come and go depending on what else is happening.
   
10. Have easily identifiable ambassadors on hand to provide guidance to newcomers on which sessions to attend and how to participate.
11. Hold pre-arranged group lunches that people can join.
12. Provide instructions on how to participate in the unconference sessions - on the website, on conference badges, on the schedule that's pinned up.
13. Give an introduction to the unconference during the core day closing - say what it is, what's happening, how to participate.
    
14. Allow people to offer small-scale mentoring or training opportunities.