Evaluation 2012

Minutes from the board's evaluation digest session March 11, 2013.

Attendants: Grégoire Détrez, Gustav Eek, Leif-Jöran Olsson and Stian Rødven Eide

Place: Språkbanken, Göteborg

The purpose of this board meeting meeting was to sort the opinions from the evaluation meeting in December. The opinions are divided in groups with regard to the different aspects of the conference. The December meeting was of the form of a post-it session. Opinions were written on notes that were sorted, and a discussion was held about the opinions. The format of the minutes is the following:

Opinion, as written on the post-it note

Discussion comments from the evaluation meetings together with the board's comments.

Board

Recycling

Organize recycling better and communicate it to the participants in an obvious way.

Noisy kids on the talks

Decide how to solve the problem. Make sure that people understand what a "children friendly conference" in terms of if one is allowed to bring kids to talks.

Baby room should be renamed into kids room or family room or so

Communicate what a "family room" is.

More pictures from the conference

The board need to process what the opinion implies, and later forward the issue to the promotion committee.

Elect people who will be at the position of the official photographer.

volunteer alcohol policy

Don't drink and work (at the same time) or ... at all ... discussion needed

Apply for stipendia and travel sponsorships sooner

Many opinions on the board's list could be put on the policy committee for decision preparation.

Café

More filling vegan food

Contacting vegan as consultants to get better understanding of the vegan food

Food for volunteers

Equip staff room with food to separate volunteer food from the conference food.
 – In conflict with the principle that "all participants are participants".
Volunteers should pre-order food on the walk-around day or even before the order of the day,

Monetize coupons

Equal the coupons to the amount of money which covers basic need of volunteers and if they want more food then they should pay extra.

Software for cashier

Look into updating the version of the current software. Barcode scanner to use?

Beer

More belgian beer: 20 brands. Hire consultant – Stian?

Meal de jour,

An idea could be to introduce different food on different day (sushi, lazagnia).

More club mate

Venue

Baby room closer to cafe

It should be more suitable for babies (games, equipment ... )
 – To much work. Parents should bring their own toys.

Use real room names, instead of using "Room 1", etc.

Schedule

Communicate it more
 – Post printouts on the walls.

Staff room is a good idea

Very positively accepted. Think more how to improve it.

Web

Have a full archive of the old conferences

Make it very visible!

Improve the post-conference website work

Invest more time into fixing the website after the conference: posting pictures, videos, etc.

Staffing

Secure a volunteer room

Volunteers should be able to leave their stuff somewhere and feel safe. This problem should be solved by the staffing people.
 – Guarding clothing and equipment is done in the reception (cloakroom).

Volunteer coordinator role

Who only coordinates volunteers. Should help deal with stuffing volunteers and know who when where and why about volunteers.

Registration shift is boring and lacks activities

People leave their cloths in rush hours all the other time there is no activity. Note this and solve.

Provide information to volunteers some kind of manual about how everything should work.

Social

Have different areas

For "loud" activity and "lounge" area, and separate them better.

Evaluation

Electronic survey

Survey on the website

Collect feedback

If participants say that they don't like X ... ask them WHY.

Hardware

Speakers are too big

Bring reasonable sized speakers

Promotion and sponsorship

Better communication with the participants

Invest time to create newsletters and send them to participants.

Use video to promote conference

All year promotion of the conference

Posting videos on different sites

It is assumed that "videos" here refer to promotion videos.

Promote with common medias

Get organisational ideas from other conferences or events

Apply for more funds

The conference of year 2012 had a positive result. It is not given in what way more sponsorship money would make the conference better.

Looking for sponsors in other nordic countries if FSCONS based there

Program

Program manager should be a bit of a dictator

Have a better description of the events during the conf in the booklet

Org

Org group big enough

Sell more tickets

The hardware team should be bigger and have more people.

Discuss!

Long term ideas

The following suggestions suites better on an idea list. The list can be used as inspiration for those that believe they have some time to spare.

More technology within the conference

Could be used to advertise the conference. Have a map of the area, etc.

File transfer solution and communication platform

To chat and share files among participants.