Vorpa Bunny

Since I never keep them I don’t really worry about New Years Resolutions. But I do like to set goals for the new year to gauge where I am at after each year. I have found that there are definitely some do’s and don’ts for setting goals though. For example, broad sweeping resolutions like “lose weight” just don’t work because they aren’t specific enough. You don’t know where to start so you don’t end up doing them. Setting something more specific like “don’t eat red meat” is a whole lot easier. But it is good not to get to specific so you at least have some room in case you need to pivot somewhere along the way. With that said it is time to get started!

My overall goal for 2010 was to recharge and de-stress, and I think I did fairly well at least on the recharge part.  So for 2011 I think I will shoot for finding the something that sparks my professional curiosity.

Here are some more detailed goals for 2011:

1) Help others to work with the tech community more

Towards the end of the year we had the Southeast Area User Group Leader Conference and one of the things I took away was the need to get more people involved in the communities and do a better job of motivating current community members. This is also something I have noticed that needs to happen in many of the small local tech conferences (aka. Barcamp, Wordcamp, etc) This really comes down to working with other people in the community to have more forward facing and inclusive roles in the current tech communities. We are both keen to have me work with some other Canonical staff members to have a more forward facing and inclusive community role with our community. Another big part of this is to find ways to motivate the members of these groups to be more active and help make the experience better for everyone.

2) Write Daily

Over the past year I have gotten back in the habit of doing a lot of reading again. To complement this I want to try to do more writing. Sadly I used to do write a lot but just got out of the habit so blogging is a good way to get back into it. At this point I have 2 active blogs: BonsaiHacker and BonsaiHackerLite that I can use. Along with this I can also write things for the Ignite site and a few others so hopefully it should be a fairly easy goal in the end. I’d like to write a post for one of them every day, meaning each blog will get one, maybe two/three posts a week, depending on the blog. Writing every day will help me to write better, think of new things to write about, and further my goals as a blogger. Here’s the specifics.

• At least 5 posts a week on one of the blogs I am associated with
• Length of the posts don’t matter.
• Posts should be finished before I go to sleep (so, I can finish after midnight, but should finish before I go to sleep).
• The night before, I should plan / outline possible posts for the next day.

3) Manage my productivity time better

Like many other people, I work a long week, but I feel like I can better tune my time. I spend huge amounts of time processing email and doing useless firefighting, and I feel like I need to protect more of my time so I can be working on projects and working with specific folks.

Other Things I Already Do but needs improvements…

There’s a lot of other things I already do – it’s so important to always be improving yourself (and others around you, if you can) all the time and every day. Improvements don’t come suddenly, they take a long time. So, creating habits that will improve yourself in the long run are good too. Things I’m already doing, and would like to continue doing are…

• Help grow the Ignite Birmingham Event and Community
• Help Grow the local *Camp’s in Birmingham
• Spend more quality time with the family
• Invest in a few Key startups if possible
• Read more

There’s so much more, I’m sure, but one person can only do so much. We’ll see how it goes, when 2012 has hit.

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.

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.

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.