[Ukfs-event] Advice on OSC conference

[Iain Roberts]

John Ingleby has sent us some very useful advice on organising the
conference based on his experiences with FLOSSIE.
Iain.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [OSC-Members] Please help (with OSC Conference)
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2023 21:33:57 +0100
From: John Ingleby <john at coronet.co.uk>
Reply-To: john at coronet.co.uk
Organization: CoroNet Information Systems Ltd.
To: Iain.Roberts at OpenSourceConsortium.org
Iain,
I kinda helped Ian Lynch with the recent Schoolforge-UK FLOSSIE
conferences, because there seemed to be a gap in the organisation that I
was able to partially fill without too much bother.
The lessons (which as a body we still haven't learnt) are:
1. Get the event team together: Chief Organiser, Registrar, Publicist,
Speaker & Exhibitor organisers. The more people the merrier. Decide if
it's to be one or two days and set a target for attendance.
1. Announce the date and location well in advance, say 3 months.
Location is important. London is the easiest place to get to from
anywhere in UK, besides having about 10% of the population within 15
miles.
2. Provide reference documentation on the OSC web site about the event
at the time of announcement:
- Name of event
- Broad aims & objectives
- Who should attend
- Why they should attend
- Admission charge
- How to book
We tried to do this as a flyer that could be printed off and pinned on
notice boards, etc.
3. ESSENTIAL: From this point on, track every single attendee, exhibitor
and speaker as they get interested and sign up, e.g "10 registrations,
340 to go". Follow up every single "Maybe, I'll think about it".
4. Keep letting the team know how numbers are building up. At first it
will be very slow, until other people outside the core team start
promoting it. FLOSSIE conferences have always ended up with 70% of
bookings in the last two weeks. (Because we don't do all the above!)
I'd love to help with this OSC event, but am quite tied up at the moment
having taken a part time IT teaching job, which is turning into a full
time network installer, administrator, IT co-ordinator...
Best regards,
John
****
-- 
Iain Roberts
Chief Executive
The Open Source Consortium