[Hacker-event-theory] turning feedback from ohm into learning points

[Attilla de Groot]

Hi All,

I've been on the list since the beginning, but was mostly reading. The arguments that I've seen come by are very useful and should contribute to organising better events in the future. However they are mostly details and currently I'm more interested in the question: "What now?". I'll respond to some of the things below, but I'll open a separate thread for this question later.


On 04 Apr 2014, at 06:21, Amran <amx109 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Power:
> - - Costly to run generators, every day costs thousands of euros in fuel.
> 
> how much would a fully paid crew cost to hire with the same ability of your volunteers? in general, running a low power generator from the get go just for the crew area would be a boon. 
> 
> Rolling out power to the whole site is, of course, silly until the event starts.

When building larger events infrastructure gets more and more important and all teams rely on it. Therefor power should be available at the key parts of the field as early as possible. If there are extra costs involved doing this, we need to adjust the budget. Multiple days 

> im with rop - do it outside of NL. the paper-pushing is just ridiculous here

I disagree. Of course the paper-pushing is ridiculous, but if it isn't organised in NL anymore we can just call it CCC 2017. And I'm not even talking about all the logistical and organisational issues when organising an event in another country with a language that we're not speaking natively.

> > - Food. Mostly guidelines only, although availability of vegetarian
> >  food can be a requirement (including diversity) and something on
> > the food for volunteers.
> 
> Food for volunteers should be available at large quantities in good
> quality. Budget is not really the issue. The only problem to solve is
> how to make sure only those people who work for it make use of it.
> 
> thats a wishy washy statement. ohm would get a tick under that statement? yet it was the single most complained about item.
> 
> the team lead ticket system at meal time worked great!

There should be no discussion about food for volunteers at any time. Food should be available 24/7 for free for volunteers that work. It is the least an organisation can do the reward the time and effort volunteers are putting in the event. No budget cuts here!


On 04 Apr 2014, at 01:38, Nick Farr <nick at nickfarr.org> wrote:

>>> teams should be mixed of NL and DE volunteers, site takes precedence
> 
> The teams that do most of these things are already set and organic. The
> NOC folks are the same at every event, it should be more or less like
> that with every team except content and core orga.

Thanks for the compliment (did you see my twitter DM by the way?).

The NOC team has grown over the years and works pretty well I think. I do like to stress on the "site takes precedence" part. I think it is logistical and organisational pretty much impossible to have teamleads from another country. E.g, you can't expect volunteers to drive/fly 4 hours for a meeting etc. or have useful local contacts.

On 04 Apr 2014, at 00:05, Eelco Hotting <eelco at hotting.nl> wrote:

> > - volunteer - volunteer desk should be (in) the center of the camp
> > - internet should be available during buildup in the vicinity of
> > NOC only and to NOC-staff only elsewhere
> 
> Almost every volunteer needs internet, both for his job as for
> motivation. This should be discussed further. It was subject of some
> heated debates during HAR2009 and OHM2013 as well. :)

**sigh**, not _again_

The reason at some point for not offering Internet during build-up was that people wouldn't work because of it. This might have been a valid argument in 1999 when we didn't have 3/4/5/6G/Wi-Max and volunteers would have connectivity anyway. If the aforementioned technologies don't work, we're nerd enough to give it the highest priority to _make_ it work. If someone doesn't want to work, he/she will find a way to don't.

Implementing any technology to limit connectivity will interfere with efforts to build a actual network. I'd rather see hard working volunteers sending an occasional tweet (read: $socialmediamessage) about how cool it is so additional volunteers will show up. If someone doesn't do work, he won't get food and if he annoys people we'll persuade him to go off the terrain until the event starts.


-- Attilla

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