What worked in Chicago (non-personal please)

Posted by robbiethegeek on March 10, 2011 at 9:40pm

The positive things that just happened in Chicago, were ....

Please post below and start talking about the things we all liked about Chicago, lets do this in a non-personal way.

Comments

Chicago

Posted by tom_o_t on March 10, 2011 at 9:45pm

The food was amazing
Great to have so many Birds of a Feather sessions, pretty good spaces for these
Good having the conference in a central location in the city with lots of bars & restaurants in walking distance

http://www.thomasturnbull.com
http://twitter.com/thomasturnbull

BOFs and more

Posted by pdrake on March 14, 2011 at 2:11pm

Quantity and quality of the birds of a feather sessions.
Layout and location of session rooms, BoF rooms and exhibit hall within a 1-2 minute walk/escalator ride made moving from one session to another less stressful.
Proximity to reasonably priced restaurants was also a plus.

+1 for the grub

Posted by crimsondryad on March 14, 2011 at 5:48pm

The food was really good. :)

i love the food and hated the mobile app

Posted by noneck on March 14, 2011 at 7:10pm

I loved the food. It was great! Also, the hotel should be closer to $100 a night and there should be wifi in the rooms. I didn't like that the hotel only had wired connections.

I hated that the mobile app and the "con" site had no integration. I also didn't like that I couldn't subscribe to "my schedule."

I did like that the BoFs were online. Albeit, they were a bit confusing on which rooms were full and not.

--
i heart drupal

+1 on the room wifi and app

Posted by crimsondryad on March 14, 2011 at 8:02pm

My wired connection didn't work for 3 of the 4 days I was there...wireless would've been terrific. :)

I have a blackberry ( meep ). So I didn't get an app at all. It would've been really helpful to have the schedule electronically via an email or meeting invite or something.

On the drupalcon site, I wish the zen helpdesk and the money part were better integrated. Having to register for 3 different sites was rough. I registered 2 other people in my office and I had to set up a username and password for each of them. Then communicating that to them and getting them confirmed took multiple emails. It just seemed like the process was harder than it had to be.

The sessions were great...lots of interesting topics with real-world applications. I didn't think I would talk to as many of the vendors as I did and it kick-started my thought process on some stuff I hadn't previously considered.

Mobile app

Posted by seeker160 on March 21, 2011 at 12:12am

What did you not like about the mobile app. Were there any redeeming features of it or features that it should of included that it did not. I am looking in to building a very similar app for a conference based on those technologies. So any comments on that one will be great so i can integrate problems with what I'm basing mine on into my planning stage.

I had the android app, and it

Posted by davidhernandez on April 7, 2011 at 2:48am

I had the android app, and it crashed constantly. Also, it seemed to be lacking info. Some things that were on the website were not on the mobile app.

I thought the flow of the

Posted by nikkiana on March 14, 2011 at 8:11pm

I thought the flow of the venue was rather interesting, and in some respects I loved it and in other respects I hated it. Since my personal priorities at the con tend to be about networking and talking to people, I tended to bounce in between the sponsors floor and the lobby which are the two 'social' areas of the conference, since the BOF floor was in between these two floors I found myself passing through there just to see what was going on whereas in DC and SF, I didn't even go to the area where BOFs were being held because it was so out of the way (and in Boston I didn't know what they were).

The food was probably the best that I've had at a Drupalcon thus far.

I liked the fact that the con was in a hotel and that we were able to use the lobby as social space after the daytime events were over.

I loved the arcade on the sponsor floor, but I feel like a lot of people didn't know it was there. I would have played a lot more air hockey had their been people around to play with!

+1 on social & sponsor space

Posted by tom_o_t on March 14, 2011 at 8:28pm

Good point nikkiana - compared to San Francisco, the social spaces at the Chicago con were great. There were plenty of places to mingle, and the sponsor room was actually spacious enough to want to walk around. It was great being able to bring our own drinks to the lobby (rather than buying $9 beers from the hotel bar), and the hotel staff were really relaxed about us being there.

The party at the field museum was great too. Although $120,000 seems a lot to spend on a party (am I remembering this figure right?), it was an amazing night. It was great to have a party with so much space, which included quiet spaces away from the band for talking, and having access to the entire museum.

One suggestion that came up in the Drupal Association's BoF about the conference on Thursday was the suggestion of having some structured time for different groups of people to meet up with Drupalers with common interests - a time when all the people focussed on non-profits could get together, all the people working in education, etc. I don't know how this would actually work in the reality of a conference setting, so many people have overlapping interests, but it may be one way to counter the feeling that the cons are so very focussed on business and corporate users.

http://www.thomasturnbull.com
http://twitter.com/thomasturnbull

good

Posted by kbell on March 15, 2011 at 5:28pm

Mostly positive comments:

the trade show setup
the food was great
the Drupal Store (messenger bags, beanies and more hoodies :)
room wifi included
try harder even to keep everyone together, and maybe provide better room-share options?
I hope it doesn't get any more expensive...
PAJAMAS!!
Lullabot Party
BoFs were great, and BoF rooms were good - maybe scheduling 3 simultaneous groups in a room was a little awkward sometimes, but overall this part was well done
I actually liked the mobile app - it was super helpful to me, though maybe the organization/IA could have been a little better. My main frustration was that I couldn't mark the sessions I wanted to attend or integrate/see the MySessions part of the web site in the mobile app (or even subscribe or otherwise integrate the MySessions choices) - maybe we could use a sched-like integration model, like at SXSW?
there was a Drupalchix meetup, and that was terrific!
the conference was BIG and is only going to get bigger - maybe finding ways to make it feel more intimate? (Coder Lounges being more conducive to collaboration?)
the Web site design was delightful - I really loved it.
We should definitely keep the part where the con and the hotel are integrated, so we can stay together as much as possible and avoid getting split up or having the energy dissipate

I have some specific suggestions for things I'd like to see done differently, and those are in the "not good" thread.

Here's to a good Con - I can't wait until we have one in NYC!

--Kelly Bell
Gotham City Drupal
twitter: @kbell | @gothamdrupal
http://drupal.org/user/293443

The food was great. Being in

Posted by davidhernandez on April 7, 2011 at 2:52am

The food was great. Being in the hotel had a lot of positives, but I can see the negatives, as well. The BoFs were much better this year, in my opinion. I think a lot of that had to do with them being in a very centralized location, not completely separated from the rest of the conference, like in SF.