BoF Feedback

As the BoF coordinator for DrupalCon Denver, I welcome your feedback on how the BoF sessions went this year and how they could be improved. Based upon feedback from Chicago, this year we made sure to have do-it-yourself BoF Scheduling on the website (which was a task since this is the first DrupalCon site to use D7). We also tried to provide better and larger displays near the BoF rooms to show upcoming sessions.

One question I'd love feedback on is whether we should continue to schedule multiple BoFs per room, or have dedicated rooms but fewer BoFs. Conferences are always under constraints for rooms and space. In Chicago, the larger rooms had 4 BoFs in them. We reduced that to only 2 BoFs for most rooms, but I heard this caused some issues for some sessions.

I also received feedback about the BoF rooms not having projectors (except for 502). This is another budget constraint and differentiates a BoF from a full session. If BoFs all had projectors then people would ask for them to be recorded, and then they'd just be the same as sessions. Some of the more successful BoFs used tools such as join.me to share screens with participants and I think that's a great idea to promote more in the future.

If you have any feedback not already covered above, post here or feel free to email me directly via my drupal.org profile. I hope you enjoyed the BoFs this year...I know they are my favorite part of DrupalCon and we want to keep making them better. Thanks!

(P.S. Thanks to all the helpers who got the BoF Scheduling tool and scrolling displays: coltrane, pixelwhip, sirkitree, and others. Couldn't have done this without you all!)

I think it would be preferable to have fewer Bofs with dedicated space. This would also force a combination of similar topics. I also think its essential to clarify whether the organizer is seeking feedback primarily on their specific product or project (i.e., organizing a user focus group) or a more general open discussion and problem solving session.

Just about every BOF I attended had one of us moving out. Having multiples in the same room was unworkable and there was nearly always an open BOF room to move to which made me wonder why they were together to begin with. Not only is it distracting having another conversation going on nearby, there's a lot of time wasted getting organized at the start for who's going where and directing latecomers to the proper group.

When scheduling a BOF, it should notify you if there is already one in there and let you choose if you want to join them. Some of the fun ones could easily go together but any needing serious attention is just going to be difficult with multiples.

Another thing that would be handy is to have the BOF rooms labeled. Doesn't need to be fancy; just a pad of paper by the door that the BOF in session could be written on and then tore off at the end to make a clean page for the next.

Michelle

Colorado mountains