Comments on MXUnit Blog: BOFs: An Opinion

Hey Marc, thanks for the feedback. It's always...

2010-04-29T03:15:29.683-04:00

Hey Marc, thanks for the feedback. It's always nice to get a few ideas from people on how we can improve things .

This being our fifth year, we've had a decent amount of time to interact with our attendees and get an idea of what would make the conference more effective for them. We've always used a similar approach to your suggestion for the BoFs, struggled with frustration and poor attendance, and been told time and time again that the BoFs need to be published ahead of time because otherwise, frankly, nobody comes.

For the first time this year, we selected the BoF topics and published the list before the conference. It drove attendance thru the roof, the BoFs were a huge hit, and (almost) everyone went home happy. You got stuck with a very broad and poorly understood topic, and that sucks.

It's a tough balance we walk between having rooms sit empty that could have had proposed topics in them vs giving people a chance to propose their own. Nothing's stopping anyone from holding a BoF in the hotel bar and tweeting about it. What seems to be the issue is communication, letting people get the word out that they're having an ad-hoc BoF.

The fact that you're not happy with your BoF is definitely reason for us to take a look at improving the BoFs, but not to ignore the success that we felt this year. I can promise you that we'll discuss this again in the steering committee and seriously consider how we can continue to improve the BoFs. I can also promise you we won't entirely discard the pre-compiled, published list of BoFs. We need to build on our successes without going back to a system we've proven 5 times doesn't work well for our audience.

Fair enough?

One of the biggest criticisms cf.Objective() atten...

2010-04-28T22:02:38.431-04:00

One of the biggest criticisms cf.Objective() attendees have had in past years was that BOFs weren't organized ahead of time and weren't on the schedule. I think there's a place for the ad hoc nature of discussions you'd like to see but the feedback from conference attendees (both at cf.Objective() and CFUnited) is mainly that BOFs should be *more* organized than less...

While I don't make it to conferences in genera...

2010-04-28T22:01:44.849-04:00

While I don't make it to conferences in general, and I definitely wasn't present for the cf.objective conference I can assert that an informal "BoF" type format works.

In my community each week, on Thursday evenings, we do this exact thing except we call it a "Chat-and-Chew" (CnC) The basic idea is to get interested people together to chat about ways to improve our community and to have a little bit to eat or drink while doing it

At the beginning of each CnC the weeks "moderator" (I use that term very loosely) introduces the concept to everyone in attendance and then asks what topics people are there to talk about.

People don't repeat topics that have already been mentioned. Once all unique topics have been announced people break off into little groups to talk about that particular idea.

All of these smaller groups find a spot to chat in the same big room. Thus, if only one person goes to a corner for a specific topic s/he can easily abandon that topic and join into a group that is discussing something else that interests him/her.

The "moderator" is basically done at that point. However, they have one more task - helping late arrivals find a topic of interest. The moderator can join in and participate in any group but they have to keep an eye pealed for those late arrivers.

When a late person shows up the moderator greets them and asks what topic they might be interested in. If they don't have anything specific the moderator can point out what each group is discussing. If they do mention something specific but no group exists for it that new person can either form a group, or, if it is a topic someone else tried to start a group for earlier, the moderator can put the two people in contact with each other. Then the moderator can go back to their topic of interest.

During the course of the evening people might pop in and out of many different topics.

It works wonderfully and has led to over 40 successful projects to help improve our small town; some of the projects have been very ambitious even.

Justice, thanks for your feedback. Matt, good poi...

2010-04-28T21:57:15.147-04:00

Justice, thanks for your feedback.

Matt, good points. As for the Pecha Kucha... that thing isn't a BOF. It's an event. Bob, Jason and I talked about that as well. It needs to be its own thing, on a different night. It's a celebration, and in the future I hope it's treated as such.

Agree with the "BOF of 2 just as important as...

2010-04-28T21:45:22.237-04:00

Agree with the "BOF of 2 just as important as a BOF of 10" comment. And I also agree that some spontaneous BOFs would be nice.

I disagree, however, with the general statement that the BOFs should not be organized in advance. If previous conferences are any indication, when the BOFs aren't organized and announced in advance, attendance is beyond poor. So while some spontaneity and additional BOFs would be good, when they aren't organized no one's even around in the BOF timeslots.

The chalkboard scenario you're describing actually has another name: unconference. And I'm all for that as well. In fact, I'd like to see an unconference track at next year's CFO. To me this is a bit different than the BOFs, however, but maybe at the end of the day it's all semantics.

Personally I thought the BOFs I was in were a resounding success this year, particularly the Pecha Kucha one, but the open source one was great as well. Perhaps I'm attributing their success to their organization and inclusion in the program erroneously, but it's hard to ignore that attendance was up by leaps and bounds over previous years when things *weren't* listed in the program.

Bottom line for me is I'd like to see more attendees with an outlet to present on interesting stuff that doesn't make it to the main schedule, and a combination of BOFs (both organized and not) and some aspect of unconference is a great way to achieve this.

I love the idea Marc, and I agree the TDD bof was ...

2010-04-28T21:44:23.432-04:00

I love the idea Marc, and I agree the TDD bof was somewhere around a C for me too. It was pretty interesting, but to someone like me who a) has limited exposure to unit tests b) has no exposure to selenium tests c) never done any TDD, most of the conversation and ideas being tossed around were at a level I had no way to absorb, and I ended up leaving about mid-way through it.

I love the whole idea of a BOF, and I always encourage audience participation in my talks because I think everyone gets more out of it that way (and move of what they way), so in my mind thats what a BOF should be, a smaller, informal talk like you suggest, where the idea's spark other conversations and it drives the conversation onward.

So yea, I'm totally behind ya on the idea of attendee created bof's. Maybe give a way for people to suggest topics, then someone who knows the topic can volunteer to 'chair' the bof and give it some direction. It sounds like an interesting idea!