Learnings

[dbrgn]

What can we improve next time?

• Put an easily readable timer (remaining minutes) on the speaker's desk
• Make sure to send a confirmation e-mail to every attendee, even people that sign up through a sponsor
• Coffee for the registration would be nice
• Keep some change money even when locking the money box in the office, for people that come late and think it's our fault that they didn't show up in time for registration 😉
• Live tweeting was great, but maybe we should limit the number of tweets to around 3 per talk to avoid spamming people's timelines.

Any others?

[chiesax]

• sponsor poster included in contract
• automatize a bit the registration process: credit card payments, automatic confirmation mail, database with list of registered attendees

[chiesax]

• publish all the ticket prices and deadlines when registration starts

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• Turn e-mail enquiries into tickets which are assigned to somebody.
• Order t-shirts/lanyards/badges way earlier.
• Explain the parking situation to sponsors.
• Use 5dl water bottles and give them to speakers instead of filling glasses.
• Have a lightning-talks session at the end.

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I got some feedback from the catering/Mensa through Stefan's secretary. Apparently a lot of attendees didn't know that lunch was not included in the ticket price. Additionally many didn't have Swiss francs with them and the Mensa usually doesn't accept Euros. So they had to scramble as a result.

Next time we should:

• Maybe include lunch in the ticket (and give out a coupon, which would also speed up lunch)
• Be sure to mention what is included in the ticket (coffee is, lunch is not)
• Make sure to mention that the Mensa (and we) only accept CHF.

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• Make sure the helpers are registered properly.
• Have helpers sign up as such by checking a checkbox on the registration form ("I want to be a helper")

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• Start our search for sponsors sooner. Some need quite a bit of time to decide.
• Ask RedHat (apparently they might be interested)

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From feedback that I received from a sponsor:

• Add orientation arrows from the train-station to the venue.
• Add the ability to have two laptops hooked up to two HDMI inputs for easy speaker switching.
• A separate room for speakers to prepare.

[dbrgn]

• Setting up the new laptop while the old speaker is still answering questions saves time, but looks quite strange in the video recordings.