The following is what we're estimating for a schedule on the day of event. This is open for a little discussion, but the times make fair sense in line with most camps, and getting in as much as possible into the day.
My hope still is that the venue can have 4 rooms (5 would be amazing). Assuming 4 rooms, the Keynote room (largest room) will have the Opening/Closing/Keynote/Featured Sessions, then 2 rooms possibly for voted sessions, then another for BOF/General Discussion/Coding.
Morning
7:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m. : Volunteer Organization & Setup
8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. : Registration & Coffee
9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. : Opening Plenary
9:30 a.m. -10:30 a.m. : Sessions
10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. : Sessions
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 a.m. : Sessions
Afternoon
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. : Lunch
1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. : Keynote
2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. : Sessions
3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. : Sessions
4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. : Sessions
5:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. : Closing Plenary & Swag Giveaway
6:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. : Venue cleanup
Evening
6:30 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. : After Party & Social Gathering there will be free beer because that's how I roll. :)
So broken down as above, with 4 rooms, the following would be true:
Keynote Room: Opening & Closing Sessions, 1 Keynote, 6 Featured Sessions
Room 2 (smaller audience): 6 Sessions
Room 3 (smaller audience): 6 Sessions
Room 4 (smaller audience): All Day BOFs/Discussions/Sprints/Checkers/Chess/Whatever
Comments
It's a good start but I think
It's a good start but I think you need to have 10 min between each session to allow for people to move to the rooms and have time to hit the bathroom etc.
Mary M.
+1 for bathrooms
Looks great! And I agree with Mary for the need for time between sessions. How about 45-min sessions, 15 minute breaks?
45-min or 60-min sessions
Wow, having a proposed schedule makes DrupalCamp look more real!
I agree with Mary and Christina. Unless you have the "Beam-me-up-to-the-next-room-Scotty" module installed, we need time for moving manually from one room to another between sessions.
45-min sessions with 15-min breaks would allow the same number of sessions you currently have proposed. 45 min feels a bit short, though. If presenters allow 15 min for Q&A, that means only 30 min for presentation.
Should we consider 60-min sessions with 15-min breaks so each session has more time? The downside is this would mean fewer sessions in the day.
Thanks for your work on this, Jake!
Mix of session lengths?
What about having a mix of 45- and 60-minute sessions, with a few double sessions (90min) for really intensive, hands-on learning? That way, there can be more sessions, but topics that merit a lot of discussion will get enough time.
+1 for mixed session lengths
That's a great idea! Those who want to learn a little bit about a lot of things can focus on the 45-min sessions and those who want to delve deeper can select one of the 60-min or 90-min sessions.
Possibly...
I think we "might" be able to do this, and we saw something similar for one of the rooms at the Western Mass camp...
The setup above is really a "guideline" of how the segments of the day will be broken up...
Mind you, while I'm building the structure for the site in D7, it is based off of the COD distribution, and I'm taking from "most" of their setup. There is a content type for "time_slot" and room.
The time slots are then associated with session items. So it could easily be possible to assign one session to two consecutive time slots.
And all this is provided we get some sessions that will work well for that format.
Jake Strawn (@himerus)
ThemeGeeks | Development Geeks
Omega - 960.gs
I think 15 minutes might be
I think 15 minutes might be too long for a break if we did 50 min sessions and a 10 minute it would work. Most sessions won't start on time so people most likely will have 15 min in between, doing a 50 min session should presenters enough time to cover a topic and have a Q&A session at the end. I know some camps have had 2 sessions back to on 1 topic which I think is a good idea there are some topics like Views that just need additional time for a good presentation.
Mary M.
Not to change the subject but
Not to change the subject but I did find these while searching for conference rooms.
http://www.snhu.edu/965.asp
http://www.executivecourtinn.com/meetings-layouts.php
http://www.manchesternh.gov/website/library/VisitUs/MeetingRooms/tabid/1...
Mary M.
In general
While the schedule may say that a session runs from 1pm - 2pm, the 45-50 min slot is somewhat implied, and will be on the Speaker FAQ that will be on the site.
Sessions do always start late, and it is good to at least be at Q&A with 10-15 min left in the hour... this gives some people in the audience the chance to get up (assuming they aren't clamoring for asking a question) and hit the restroom, get a quick chat in with someone in the general areas of congregation, or step out for a smoke (for those dirty smokers) ;)
I frequently DO get up near the end of a session or during Q&A for just that reason, and at the Q&A point, it's not (IMHO) considered rude to start clearing the room.
We definitely want as long as possible FOR the session content, but yes, to imply that "wrap your session up early" so we can move between sessions.
I've seen camps where throughout the day the schedule shifted almost 15 min every hour because of issues over this stuff... but rather than overcomplicate it in any way, I think it best to just "label" them as hour blocks, and through the speaker FAQ, and volunteers letting speakers know when to wrap it up, we can control this well, and still allow for the breaks we need.
Jake Strawn (@himerus)
ThemeGeeks | Development Geeks
Omega - 960.gs