== The Guerilla Guide To Running a Free Conference == I've organised, or been involved in organising, a fair few conferences in the last 8 years or so. Crucially a bunch of them, including the last 5 London Perl Workshops, have been completely free. Since a couple of people have asked - this is some of the things that I've learnt (much of which is applicable to running any conference) and a couple of Frequently Asked Questions answered. First off ... = Why do you want to do a free conference anyway? = More specifically "Why do you not want to charge?" (the answer to "Why do you want to organise a conference in your spare time?" is simply - because you're dumb). The answer, for me, is two fold. First off not charging for a conference encourages more people - the kind of people who might not normally come to a conference - to attend. Usually a conference is organised round a community and communities wither and die when they get too insular and don't keep restocking the meme pool by aquiring new members. This helps with that. Secondly - charging money adds an extra layer of complexity. You're going to have to set up a bank account, find some way for people to pay you (PayPal helps here but you'll need something more than the free account) and also it raises expectations - when people pay they feel entitled and entitled feeling people are difficult to deal with. There's a weight off your shoulders when you realise that in the worst case scenario you can always turn to your attendees and say "Well, you get what you pay for". Not that I recommend doing that but when the worst case scenario isn't so bad then things get easier. Case in point - a few years ago someone from O'Reilly arrived at the venue a little before I did prepared to set up a stall and sell some books. I was running a teeny bit late but got a panicked phone call from them saying that the security guard at the venue had never heard of us. After a few rounds of alternating between swearing like a sailor and uncontrollable weeping I took a moment, told myself to man up and realised that I could just commandeer a couple of pubs and have people give talks in a much more informal manner. Fortunately it turned out to be just a case of over-zealous but under-intelligent security and everything turned out fine but if it hadn't and I'd charged then I'd be in a far more difficult position. This leads to ... = The Golden Rules = Rule The Zeroeth: Keep things as simple as possible. Rule The First: Obey the Zeroeth rule at all times Rule The Second: It's only a conference - what's the worst that can happen? Rule The Third: Spend as little money as humanly possible. Zero is the ideal. Now, with those in mind - let's dive into how to actually pull off this crazy caper. = If you book it, they will come = The most important thing, apart from the Zeroeth rule, is that you only have to care about two things - a venue and a date. In that order. Given the Third Rule you're ideally looking for somewhere that will host it for free. Some companies will let you borrow their conference rooms for a weekend but they tend to have onerous security rules which violates the Zeroeth rule. The best places I've found have been universities since they have large lecture theatres with all the necessary AV gear and if you can find a friendly member of faculty you're basically good to go. I've found that offering to give a free beginners class for any of their students tends to grease the wheels somewhat. Your choice of venue will inform your dates since, if you're getting it for free, you'll need to fit in with their calendar. If you have a choice I'd suggest trying to find a weekend near another conference date. We'll talk about why later. = How to obey the Zeroeth Rule by ignoring normal Conference Practices = Since we're not planning on taking any money we don't want to spend any money and that means no lunch, snacks or beverages, no schwag, no tshirts. More controversially however - no wireless. Why? Because it never fucking works. Name one conference where the WiFi hasn't been up and down more times than the NASDAQ? If you try and provide it I guarantee that you'll end up spending way too much time dealing with complaints about it and trying to get it back up and running and, as we'll see later, you'll need all the time you can get. Also, and I admit this is a personal feeling - WiFi in the auditoriums means that people stop paying attention to the talk. And there's nothing worse as a speaker than looking out and seeing the top of a bunch of nerd heads bent over their screens reading XKCD. Ok, maybe realising that you're not wearing any trousers would be worse or that you have a large swastika Sharpied on your forehead might be worse, but you get my point. Some people will bleat about "the back channel". Fuck them. Seriously. The corridor track is more important anyway. Leave your discussions until after. And in this day and age anybody who really cares will have a 3G or EVDO card anyway. It's not my job to cater to the average programmer's chronic ADD. = Taking 30 pieces of silver = Let's take a small digression here to talk about sponsors. Your goal should be to run this conference for nothing. It should have zero outlay and overhead. Therefore you don't really needs sponsors. Taking money off sponsors raises its own set of problems just like taking money off people. First off you need the infrastructure to do it - asking them to write a personal cheque may or may not work. Secondly it's going to raise expectations from them - they're going to want a certain, for want of a better word, SLA. Imagine if a sponsor had given you a few hundred dollars, maybe even a thousand, and then you'd had to pull that pub stunt I mentioned earlier. They may be totally cool with it, they may not. And if they're not you could suddenly find your self in the merde. That said, sponsors do imbue some sort of legitimacy which is actually more important than you might think - not least because companies seem touchingly reluctant to pay the travel costs of employees going to free conferences since, I suppose, they presume that it's a fly-by-night mickey mouse[tm] operation. Having a bunch of recognisable companies attach their name to the whole affair soothes the corporate brow somewhat and let's them just think that they're getting a good deal. I had two strategies for dealing with this dichotomy, sometimes used in combination: If anybody asked to sponsor I'd politely decline but offer to stick their logo on the web site and the programmes anyway and mention them in the keynote and final wrap up. If they wanted to send people along to talk or wanted to turn up and hand out schwag then that was cool too as long as they weren't too garish about it. Moreover if they fancied doing something else then that was good too - my suggestion, as a confirmed lush, was to stick some money behind the designated post-event pub then that would be awesome. An alternative, I suppose would be for them to supply lunch and/or beverages during the day. The problem with that is that it may have health and safety issues and/or be forbidden due to non-compete deals the university may have with various vendors. Hence usually suggesting the pub - I have no desire to go learn H&S rules as well as organising this thing. Every company I've dealt with has been fine with that - without meaning to sound like a giant corporate whore, big shout outs go to, over the years: Nestoria, O'Reilly Publishing, Fotango (RIP), Outcome, ACM, Sophos, Six Apart, Venda, Shadowcat Systems, Magnum Solutions, Investor Dynamics, Antibody MX, Imperial College, City University and especially The University of Westminster. = Speaker City = By now you'll have a venue, and a date. Hopefully a website as well. Now you'll need speakers. This is actually pretty easy, especially if your community is vibrant. I tended to do two tracks so that people had some variety and choice. I themed mine - beginner and advanced although your mileage may vary. Then I asked for talk submissions and, at the same time, went and asked, bribed, bullied, guilt tripped and generally cajoled other people to do it. I tried to mix proven speakers with new comers. I was always in two minds about whether to encourage the proven speakers to give old talks (or talks that they planned to give at bigger conferences later in the year) or new material. Old material has several advantages - for a start they've already written the talk so it's less effort for them and also you already know the quality. Remember also that you're going to get people coming to your free conference who don't usually go to the larger more formal conferences - this may be their only chance to see these people give talks. On the other hand speakers might be bored with old material and also a percentage of your conference goers may have already seen or will see that talk later. As with all these things it's a judgement call based on your community and the make up of expected attendees. A word now about known 'faces' and conference celebrity speakers. I know various people who speak at so many conferences that they won't do it for free. At best they'll want you to 'only' pay for their flight and hotel. And that's they're perogative. I did manage to get one or two people like that by scheduling the conference around when other conferences were in the area and asking politely and, in one case, I persuaded 3 banks to each pay for 2 days worth of training from a celeb, including flights and hotel and in return he gave an awesome 2 hour talk. Another piece of advice - have some backup speakers. These are usually old hands who have a spare talk that they've already done before just lying around. Talk to them before hand and then, in case of minor disasters (like when one of my speakers cried off 2 hours before his talk due to 'flu' after being out till 2am the night before) you can pull the emergency cord and deploy them fulling inflated. Ok, that metaphor doesn't quite work but you get my point. For that matter it's worth having a talk prepared for yourself just in case. You're the only person you can really rely on so it behooves you to be 100% Boy Scout prepared. Try and solicit (or bully) speakers fairly early to give them time to prepare and so that you can publish a schedule early enough to entice attendees whilst also giving yourself time to recover if someone pulls out. Try and send the schedule out to speakers early noting that it is tentative so that they can request different time slots for whatever reason. It's possible that you won't be able to please everyone but I can't ever remember having a problem so serious it couldn't be worked out fairly easily. = Volunteers = Volunteers can be handy but, to be honest, there's not much to do between picking the date and venue and the actual day. The biggest problem with volunteers, as elided to in the previous section, is that they might let you down. This may sound harsh but if you want to maximise the chances of having stuff done in time then you probably don't have time to recover if somebody doesn't get round to doing something. When it comes to volunteers the worst thing to hear is not "no" it's "maybe". That said, on the day, conscripted volunteers are going to be useful. But more on that later. = Things to do beforehand = If you've followed the zeroeth rule then things to do before hand are remarkably simple. Make a PDF or printable web page with the schedule on and encourage people to print it out but you'll also want to go print out a bunch to leave lying around the venue. Whilst I wouldn't suggest having an official conference hotel I find it's useful to scope out a few hotels within easy striking distance of the conference across few price ranges and stick those on the website. I also suggest a pub for the night before and list one for the post conference gathering. Especially for the latter it's worth phoning the pub up and warning them that you might have a large group of people coming - a lot of pubs will give you a reserved area or room without any money down. Create a map with the venue, the hotels and the pub(s) on it and then stick that on the back of the schedules you're printing out. I also tend to stick the logos of the sponsors and the venue on there - it gives everyone involved a warm fuzzy glow that makes them more amenable to doing it again. Since you're printing stuff out you're also going to want to to print out a bunch of pages with the name and/or logo of your event and arrows pointing up, down left and right. Print more than you think you're going to need. I usually print a load with just the logo, a load with the logo and the 4 directions and then a nother load with the logos and arrows but also with the name of the two different tracks on. Buy some non-marking Blu-Tack and some non-marking Sellotape/Scotchtape or local equivalents. You'll need them later. Also a big black marker. If at all possible try and get the presenters' talks before hand and copy them to your own laptop, a USB key, a web server somewhere and maybe even email them to your self. It may seem like overkill but it's zero effort and its saved me a couple of times in the past. Along with all the various copies of the talks keep copies of the documents with the arrows on and the shcedule with maps page. Again, you'll probably not need them but you never know. = The big day = I usually pop in to the social event the night before but leave relatively early on since, distasteful as it is, you'll want to be at the venue as early as possible to get the ball rolling. The first two things you'll want to do, after introducing your self to the people at the venue, is start sticking up signs and check the AV equipment. The most obvious sign to put up first is on the front door to the venue so that people know they've got the right place and then after that start sticking up signs in the surrounding area to funnel people towards the venue. Then start putting up signs internally pointing to the various rooms. Almost inevitably various attendees will have turned up early (or friends that you've amassed enough blackmail material on over the years to persuade them to turn up early to help you) and this is a perfect conscripted volunteer job which will free you up to go check the AV equipment. In an ideal world you'll be able to provide a couple of spare laptops with Powerpoint and/or Adobe Acrobat and/or iPresenter or whatever the Mac thing is called installed. A variety of web browsers doesn't hurt either. And a SSH client. Make sure those both work with the projectors available which will give you a good fallback in case a presenter's laptop fails to work. Much as the might pain the Linuxistas out there I've found that people who wish to use one of the Free Software Operating Systems to present with are best scheduled after a break since they tend to be the trickiest to get working right - often requiring an invigorating number of reboots and X Server restarts. Whilst character building and harking back to the days when men were men and bootstrapped their operating systems using toggle switches on the front panel of their machine it tends to leave the audience fidgety and prone to spontaneous rioting. When all that's done I tend to acquire, either myself or by sending off a passing person clutching a grubby fiver on their sweaty mitts, a bunch of water bottles to give to the speakers. It's not strictly necessary but it's a nice touch and, again, encourages a repeat attendance in subsequent years. Now I'm going to let you in on the nasty, dirty secret of running a conference - you're probably not going to get to see many, if any of the talks. Instead you'll be running round like a blue arsed fly smoothing out little bumbs and snags, herding presenters and attendees round and generally acting like a combination between fixer, mother, party hostess and general gopher. To be honest, you might not even have time to grab lunch so it's possible worth bringing along a sandwich or getting someone to grab you something. = Videos and Slides = In an ideal world you'll get all the slides from presenters before the actual day and you'll be able to stick them up on the website ahead of time. In reality the likelihood of you even being able to get them up on the website the day after the conference is pretty slim - it generally takes a bit of badgering to get your speakers to send them you. It's worth doing though - although you should note that some speakers don't want to give them out, especially the big names. Videos ... well, that's another story. Whilst these days camcorders are cheap and every mobile phone and digital SLR can take HD video it should theoretically be dead easy to record everything for posterity and future fame and glory. However, there are a couple of drawbacks - first off you'll need people to man the cameras which is another source of complications, violating the zeroeth rule. Plus, you'll probably need to mike the presenters because most ambient mikes are pretty crappy. Then, presuming you do manage to get it all recorded then you have to upload them somewhere = Post Partum = = In conclusion = If it's sounds like I'm repeating myself then it's because I can't overstate how important it is - keep things simple. Seriously.