The quick and dirty discription of a a Jelly is an every-so-often casual coworking session. Which is basically a group of various devs, designers and freelancers getting together and working from the same locaton in a collaborative model. Anyone is welcome to come, bring a laptop, and work alongside other creative, fun people.  See workatjelly.com and this blog post for more background on the history and background of jellys. Go here for Birmingham Jelly info.

This week our friends over at Sparkbox Coworking have invited us to have a jelly at their facility on Friday. There will be snacks and refreshments at the Jelly. For more info check out the facebook event. It doesn’t matter who you work for, or what you do, if you think that working with smart and friendly people would benefit. Then join our facebook group or come to one of our meetings.

The event again brought together community leaders from throughout the southeast for a day of networking and brainstorming with other community leaders. 20+ user groups (listed here) were represented this year including people from Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham, Greenville-Spartanburg, and Augusta.

So what is the reason behind this event you ask? Well many tech community groups face similar challenges such as “Where can we meet?” “How to get Sponsors”, and “How to maintain and Grow membership” So why not get those groups together to share solutions and best practices with each other to help better the tech community as a whole? Well that is just what we did.

Since the goal was to make connections and share ideas/best-practices we started with a game like last year. Everyone was encouraged to sit next to someone they didn’t know and each lunch while we worked on the game, and afterwards the group with the most correct answers got prizes.

The event itself was run like a traditional “unconference”, and the schedule was not fixed. So after lunch and the * activity we started by soliciting topics from the leaders, and setting up breakout sessions to discuss each of the topics. After each hour of breakouts, each group gave a summary to the others of their conclusions, salient points and next steps.

The main breakout topics this time included “Alternative Meeting Formats”,  “Incorporating and Non-Profit Formation”,  “Cross Group Interactions”, and “Member Motivation, Participation, and Continuous interaction”.  We put notes and summaries of the conversations on the wiki to make sure the information is accessible to others. You can click on the topics above to get to the notes. We are still working on adding notes for some sessions.

After the event we enjoyed a catered dinner and then finished it off with some XBOX gaming (Halo: Reach and Rock Band), and some good old-fashioned socializing over beer.

I really enjoyed the event again this year and it always helps to see user groups from all over have the same issues we do. We heard a lot good ideas and learned from all sorts of various situations others have had. Hopefully we will be able to keep this group engaged and make the User Groups in the Southeast second to none.

This year I started the Ignite Birmingham effort and had arguably a decent amount of success. Based on this I am planning on trying to make it a quarterly event here in Birmingham. Over the last few years I have been involved with alot of other great people while working on Barcamp Birmingham, Wordcamp Birmingham and theTechmixer Birmingham Events. This post is an attempt to write down some tips for organizing events like ignite. Here are my thoughts on getting things to the day of the event as they stand today:

Know and stay true to your motives
One of the interesting things discussed at Dragon*Con is the concept of the Butt-in-Seat vs Specialized Con’s. So with that in mind I personally think both ways are just as valid but it is best to stay with the method that works with what you want to do with your event. (Note this could easily change) I personally find my motive with Ignite and *camps is to take the specialized approach. I like to be around like-minded people but tend to draw in people with views that don’t jive perfectly with my worldview, but I find a variety of view points generates better more thought out ideas. These motives are what drive me to want to help with these events. Looking at events I have been to the best ones seem to be driven by a pure motive. Sometimes an event looks successful on paper but in the greater scheme of things it was really a failure.

Know you audience but stay true to your style
This is for you, and your community. Know what you both need to get out of it. If you live in a place with glitz and glam you might put on an event that is trendy. If you live is a place that doesn’t have many events, make it as accessible as possible. If your community kicks ass and doesn’t have a lot of time, make it quick. Don’t put on an architecture Ignite if your community is Social Media Experts.

Build a Great Team

Doing everything yourself can tire you out. Besides the more people involved the more cool ideas you can bring to your event. Alot of great event series have died out because the team just got tired and didn’t want to do it anymore so be sure to bring in new blood from time to time to keep the zeal fresh!

Get the right Venue

Finding a good Venue is the hardest part for most people so start with this first! Get a venue for free(ish) and use social capital to give back if you can. Think about parking, where your core audience is coming from and the size. Ambiance is also a big bonus if you can provide a venue that has something unique. You should definitly try to fill up the room, since the feel of a full room than it is with a 50% full venue.

Look at other events in town and Define Success

Write down what you wold be happy with. 500 people coming / 15 people saying ‘best event ever’ / have fun personally. Work towards this goal!

Promotion

Get a “yourevent.com” or “.<something>” and put up a nice looking wordpress self hosted site. It should have the basics (time, where, what) and make a personal plea for people for people to show up. If it looks bad, people will not want to come . Create a facebook group, Twitter account and feedburner for rss and link to these from your home. I would suggest against using another Social Media Tool (facebook group, or Meetup site) as a home page since you get less freedom in what you can do and it looks less professional.

I suggest getting your friends and friends friends to the first few events. This helps to build an initial community to build upon and make the events better. Then reach out to promoting at traditional venues such as local papers, TV, and Radio stations to help get the work out. This worked well for our second ignite event. Don’t overhype your event, if expectations are too high then it could overshadow an otherwise good event. Consider how you promote the event carefully since different groups respond to messages in various ways. If you are shooting for a small target market it is easier since you can promote very concisely. If you are going for a broader group it helps to start small and slowly add the different groups at intervals to your event.

Sponsors

Find good sponsors. I suggest starting out with a venue sponsor and some smaller sponsors to help pay for small items like food, shirts, and beer. It helps to start out with a small group of sponsors to help build a good brand relationship with your sponsors and prove what you can do for one another. Sponsors can also help by providing swag which is especially a big hit with the younger crowds.

Final thoughts

Those are my thoughts on the Pre-Event Planning stages of running a Con. Hopefully some of this proves useful to you and your event. Please feel free to share you thoughts, One of the best parts of Con-planning is the cool community of planners! I will post updates as they pop into my head. I will also do a post on running the event itself and the post event.

Its been a month since my last Desktop Notes post. Mainly due to alot going on in the past month. This is what has been going on:

• Post Ignite Birmingham tasks
• BarCamp Birmingham 4 Planning and then the event itself
• Bringing back Birmingham Jelly
• Loads of new projects at work!
• IPSA Summer Networking Event
• Working on 2 new personal application projects
• Saving bonsai trees from #waspocalypse

The next month is also going to be busy it seems:

• Coming up this weekend is DragonCon 2010!
• Planning for Wordcamp Birmingham 2010

I picked up a dodo case a few weeks back as well. I really like it because it blends in well with my notebook of choice:  moleskine journals

An assortment of items has been accumulating on my desk as of late. The maid kindly piled it up for me

Its been a long time since I did a Desktop Notes article to kind of give people an idea as to what I have been up to so I figured I would put a quick piece together.

• We held the first Ignite Birmingham Event here in beautiful Birmingham, AL http://www.ignitebirmingham.com/
• Went to the Southeast Linuxfest and Rendezvous Bonsai Conference.
• Finished 2 new web projects and lost a month to large projects at work.

Oh and I almost forgot I picked up an ipad as well. Going to try to get my bonsai app to work on it.

Picked up this ipad stand from amazon this week. I think it was meant for netbooks but they re-branded it for ipads and it works well. And is compact so can travel easy.

The stand from behind in action!

Been doing a good bit of work on Ignite Birmingham 2 this week. I have a few meetings in the next few weeks that will hopefully help us be even better!

Another arrangement of figures on my desk.

Here is my current setup in front of my computer. I change it up every few weeks. Found out the Drossel makes a good business card holder!

I keep most of my business books in my hutch now but I am moving away from hard-copy for most of these and going digital. If they have a lot of useful graphics or charts I may still buy them but right now it is easier to use my kindle or ipad.

This is my wall of dunny’s. I picked up a few Asian art a art fair a few months back and I ended up putting them here on my wall along with my John Lytle Wilson pictures. I will get around to hanging them eventually.

This is my bonsai book shelf were I keep most of my bonsai books be they photo-books or learning books. I have collected a good bit of them over the years and plan on getting a few more photo-books later this year. I really need to focus on my trees in the next few weeks but a lot will depend on the rain.

I have been a few weeks since I started to re-arrange the bonsai on my deck to get better sun and to also look a little nicer so I figured I would do a quick photo post on the subject. Between long work hours and family time this has taken weeks when it should have taken hours but it was well worth it!

My reasoning behind this change was some of my trees were getting to much light and some were not getting enough. So to fix this I put the light loving trees on the outside edge of my deck.

The smaller trees and the the semi shade loving trees I put on the edge near the roof were they get sun all day except the late afternoon. Some of these trees like full sun so I will probably swap these out and put them on the edge on a week by week basis. If you notice I put small bamboo shelves on the back of the bench to hold my smaller trees.

Here is my phoenix graft juniper and a bald cypress I will be working on shortly
My large Chinese Elm. It is one of my favorite trees though it hasn’t gotten enough sun this year so far.
Some of my tropical trees. A severely overgrown Surinam Cherry, shohin crape myrtle, and a new bougainvillea.

This Juniper I plan on moving out into the yard soon. But the 2 Wisteria, Weeping Willow, and Trident Maple will probably stay.
I love watching my trees bloom. Here is my new crape myrtle beginning to bloom.

Some blooms on the new bougainvillea.

This is what got me interested in bringing Ignite to Birmingham. I knew there were lots of people in Birmingham who have great ideas and alot of people who could help each other out greatly that just don’t know about each other. And Ignite and other unconferences are a great way to bridge this gap in new and interesting ways. Through Ignite I had already had the chance to meet people I would not normally have had the chance to meet, and be influenced by some of there great ideas.

So based on that I ask you, the reader, to ask yourself this question “Who would I like to see speak at Ignite?”. If you know the person then consider recommending they propose a talk for ignite, and if not feel free to add there name here so we know who might be good to approach. You can direct them to http://www.ignitebirmingham.com for more info and here is link to the proposal form http://www.ignitebirmingham.com/proposals/

Along the way I’ve tried to help with a lot of events that also helped grow the community such as: Barcamp, Wordcamp, Alabama LugFest, and other events. And I have met lots of great people, lots of characters, and been continuously impressed with the caliber of people in the Metro Area. While many people are pessimistic about the area I believe we have the pieces to build a vibrant and prosperous creative community in the area. And I want to do everything I can to help the city see the possibilites.

Last year I was lucky enough to get to attend a few Ignite events in cities I traveled to due to work and it got me thinking. I had been previously exposed the the quick talk format through “lightning talks” at events like OSCON and I thought it was an easy yet powerful format. So I started to think since there are so many cool groups, conferences, organizations, and people in Birmingham that that it would be awesome to have a night once every few months where we can all get together and share all of those ideas that are burning inside us – technology, art, communications, or whatever the topic. Since most of the events I have been involved with have been very tech heavy , this would provide an opportunity to get a wider audience and hopefully get them excited about the City/Metro Area again.

The goal was for Ignite Birmingham to be a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea, concept, or passion — and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd. It is about democratizing the tech discussion, sharing ideas, and their free exchange . So in essence Ignite Birmingham was started to spark a discussion. These discussions will hopefully help the area grow and prosper by making a closer creative community. So let’s get out there and spark a discussion, share an idea, and help each other out!

Over the years I have had the privilege to be involved one way or another in several technology events in the area. These include the Techbirmingham Techmixer, Birmingham Startup, barcampbirmingham, Wordcamp Birmingham, e-cycling day, and most recently ignite birmingham. So this has prompted me to want to write about my experiences in the prior events and more specifically my experiences in future events. I have been worked with some truly amazing people during the planning of those events and hope to help give others the chance to contribute going forward to help grow this community until it is a successful as it can be. Stay tuned for post on this subject as well as some announcement of upcoming events.

Looks like its time for another installment of Desktop Notes. Well we just had the nicest weekend of year here in birmingham so its been a decent start to the week if nothing else. Last Friday I went my first Birmingham Lunch Bunch meeting and had a lot of fun seeing everyone. I used to be able to do jelly’s on Fridays but currently that is not an option at my new employer, maybe later.

The top thing going on through my head early this week was actually brought about by the warm weather. I really need to plan out what I need to do as far as late winter/early spring bonsai work. I know I need to repot several of my trees this year and restyle 2 of my pines. I also have a few deciduous trees I need to do some restyling on as well. The new pottery shipment has arrived at bonsaimonk in Atlanta but since I already have enough extra pots I am trying to resist the trip over there. I will startup my bonsai notes section in a few weeks when I start working in earnest again.

I have also downloaded OT2 again this week and plan to start entering my bonsai into the app and start working on a web interface for the db. I hope to actually make a community site where people can host there info and discuss what they are working on but I am going to start with just my personal stuff for now. I hope to post some thought on this later this week.

Rearranged the figure area on my desk

The 2 new arrivals are making saber nerves.

And last but not least it seems Zange-chan is picking on Nagi again.