• PRE-REGISTRATION:  If you have it, make the most of it.  Some 5Ks (such as charitable fund-raisers I’ve been in) mail participants their t-shirts/bibs ahead of time.  This saves a LOT of time and should be considered, even if that means raising the price of the event.  Also, don’t make folks sign waivers online and THEN make them sign them on-site.
• I/O:  If this is going to be a large event, have separate parking/entrances/intake systems for volunteers/staff, active participants (e.g., panelists/GOHs), and regular attendees (spectators).  Have the exits be separate from the entrances.   If you make people fill out information on-site upon entering, have enough pens to prevent bottlenecks.
• OPS: Have special staff who are prepared to deal with emergencies, and put them in recognizable outfits so everyone (other staff, volunteers, and the general public) can find them.
• ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS:  Multiple modes are good, especially for announcing changes.  Don’t just rely on emails or FB/Twitter announcements, since folks may miss one or the other due to email spamtraps or not being aware of particular social media channels.  Have a way for participants to communicate with (help) each other to alleviate some of the load on staff.  E.g., publish a Twitter hashtag (and URL for those who aren’t Twitterers) ahead of time — anyone with a smartphone can search on, read, and refresh that in their cars (with someone else driving).  Twitter accounts are only needed to *post* to the hashtag.
• ON-SITE COMMUNICATIONS:  Have a system set up beforehand appropriate to the scale of the event for staff/volunteers communicating with each other (walkie-talkies, radios, or cellphones), and for communicating with crowds.  Have more than one person who knows how to turn off the music and make public safety announcements.
• PUBLIC SAFETY:  Contact police and medical emergency responders ahead of time.  Have a way for injured people at least to be taken back to public transport/parking, not told to walk back, e.g., a golf cart.
• SANITATION:  Have adequate bathroom facilities (even temporary ones) at likely bottlenecks, and make sure supplies are re-stocked.

Case Study:  Run For Your Lives

Run For Your Lives, Camp Ramblewood (Darlington, Maryland), October 22, 2011

This was the inaugural “Zombie 5K” (obstacle course 5K with runners racing through a campground away from zombie actors, the weekend before Halloween).  RFYL announced a few days ahead of time that there were 1000 racers + 10000 spectators signed up (* see comment).  Many people had a great time there.  However, parking problems were not sufficiently prevented, racers were delayed from getting into their planned “waves”, and with darkness approaching and the injuries mounting up (a broken leg, one or two broken clavicles, twisted ankles, etc.), the EMTs had the staff shut down the last wave.  Around 300 of the pre-registered runners had long waits only to find they would be unable to run, with an uncertain refund process (still not announced one day later).   Other event issues contributed to their frustration and disappointment.  In at least one case, lack of planning may have contributed to one runner’s further injury.  This was a first time event for the event runners.  I don’t know if they reached out to anyone more experienced for help planning the event once it became clear how big it was going to be.  They are vowing to listen to all feedback and improve for the next 6 runs they’re planning for next year.  For future participants’ sakes, I hope they do improve.

This is from my personal experience.  A couple of friends and I were signed up for the 3:30 wave of runners, and we got within 6 miles of the event by 2:10 pm.  As we waited to park, I checked RFYL’s Facebook page to see at least two status messages from them with assurances that we’d all still get to run despite the parking delays (they didn’t update their Twitter account).  We were finally parked around 4:45.  We didn’t get to run.  I know I had an incomplete picture, and some parts of the event ran smoothly and well, but these are the issues I saw, and all could have been alleviated with better planning.

1. PARKING:  They knew from registrations how many were coming but had ONE farm field with ONE entrance for parking.  The hay they scattered at the entrance was inadequate to prevent cars getting stuck in the mud, with everyone coming in at the exact same place.  We sat in traffic for 2.5 hours waiting to park because they had posted twice on FB that we’d still all get to race (and they never posted a new update that we wouldn’t all get to race after all, just an apology way after the fact — unless they had said it somewhere down in the hundreds of comments).   Other people had much longer waits, for the same result (not allowed to run).   That’s AFTER getting to Darlington Road, not counting the drive to get to within 5-6 miles of the camp (some drove for 8 hours from out of state, for no joy).   Also, it should have been simple enough to send someone walking up the road to tell the long line of cars waiting to get in, what was going on — not everyone had smartphones to get the (incorrect) information in the Facebook posts, after all!
2. WAITING:  Then we waited in line for the bus, and waited in line for the pathetic bag check (see below), and waited in line to get waiver forms to fill out again (but no pens), and waited in line to get our race packets (where a few people had pens), and waited in line to check our gear (knapsack of clean clothes), and waited in line to start the race.   Some lines were adequately staffed for the size of the event.  Many were not.  Oh yeah, one of the lines  had a poster which mentioned the Twitter hashtag Z5K we should have been told of days ago by RFYL’s own Twitter account, @runfromundead.
3. CONFUSION:  Volunteers/staff wandered by various lines at various times and told 10 of us at a time inconsistent information which we could hardly hear over the booming music (I guess it never occurred to them to make announcements over their own sound system).  The one guy who had a hand-held loudspeaker didn’t know how to use it, rotating his body as he spoke so we could only get one word in 5 as he fanned over our part of the line.  It was hard to tell who were fellow participants trying to help out (passing on rumours), who were volunteers (passing on out of date information?), and who were actual staff (who didn’t seem to agree with each other), beyond the one person in a “STAFF” shirt I saw later.  The shuttles kept bringing folks in from the parking field for a while even after the last wave was cancelled.  Better training, communication systems, and identification systems (even t-shirts) would help with all this.
4. LACK OF CONTINGENCY PLANNING:  When we finally got the semi-official word that there would be no more runner waves and we should head “over there” for refunds, we went to another long line, this one right in front of the horribly loud speakers for the whole field (my friends and I couldn’t hear each other to strategize what to do next, except by screaming).  I went up to the front of the 300+ people waiting for refunds to see what was happening, and saw *two people* slowly (in between long long complaints/vents from folks in line) taking names and zip codes on loose sheets of paper on a rickety card table.  After waiting for some blowhard to finish yelling at the guy on the side with a “STAFF” t-shirt about wanting a parking refund (from the farmer? it was at least 5 solid minutes of wind), I asked the staffer (who looked overwhelmed), “Do all 300 of us really have to wait in line just to give our names?  We all registered online.  Can’t we follow up in email to get our refunds?”  He stared at me for a minute, then grabbed one of the two people at the card table, and they went off in a huddle.  Several folks in line thanked me for suggesting this bit of brilliance (you’re welcome!).  As more staff (?) joined the huddle, I left and updated my friends.  EVENTUALLY someone came by and told us (10 at a time, again, with the music STILL blaring) that we didn’t have to wait in line any more, and could leave.
5. SAFETY:  In addition to the injuries runners suffered, I heard several zombie actors in line waiting to leave discussing being hit, body-checked, screamed at, cursed, and threatened by runners.  Not having been able to run, I don’t know what measures were on hand to prevent fights or provide first aid on the run.  I do know that while we were waiting to enter the event, we saw one poor girl hobbling along in a brand-new ankle cast to get into line for the bus to get back to her car.  Apparently they patched her up and waved her offsite, possibly aggravating her injury in the process.  A golf cart to ferry injured people at least back to the head of the bus line, if not back to their cars, would have been nice AND good business.   Back to the parking lot:  Also, when we tried to leave, someone had abandoned their SUV in such a way as to block the exit, so we had to drive across the field to the entrance to leave.  No one seemed to be doing anything about the abandoned car, much less warning people or using a flag system to show the way to the revised exit (entrance), making everyone’s departure more confused and dangerous.
6. SECURITY:  Why have a bag check at all, if you’re not going to do it right?  We had a soft-sided suitcase with clothes to change into after the race.  At the two card tables at the entrance, the two people per table  sort of looked at bag contents — not opening all compartments, and certainly not examining individual items, e.g., my friend’s boots in the bag.  Lots of questionable items could have been snuck in by anyone, as far as I could tell.   Also, had our refund line broken into a riot (things were getting really ugly in some parts of the line, with folks having driven from two or three states away practically losing it and getting each other worked up), there did not seem to be any contingency in place for this.

Positive aspects:  As I said, many folks had a lot of fun.  The staff and volunteers remained pretty polite under a lot of pressure.   As we were walking back to our field parking lot 2 miles away (the bus line was long and I was antsy), a zombie volunteer we’d been chatting with was kind enough to offer to chase us when we weren’t too far off, so she went RAARRRRR!!!!! and we ran and screamed for a few hundred feet as she chased us back to the field entrance, and that was fun.  Too bad we couldn’t experience the whole run, but it did get the adrenalin going and give me an extra push, and I bet I might have enjoyed the event.

Technical:

• Giving a technical presentation: There were about 12 attendees for my Continuous Integration talk Sunday morning (see description in comments). There were a few sysadmin types; most were developers, most from small shops. This topic is tied in with a lot of my configuration management interests, and I was glad to get a chance to talk about it. Thanks to the audience for listening and asking questions!
• Attending technical talks. I want to do more of this next year, somehow (hard to fit it all in). Went to the DevOps talk (I was surprised to be the ONLY woman out of about 45 attendees) and part of Automating Amazon EC2 with Puppet & Friends (sad the latter was delayed for 15 minutes, as that’s the one I knew less about, but couldn’t stay much longer, after it finally started). Thanks to Penguicon staff/volunteers for setting up so technical presentations went smoothly (mine and those I attended).

Non-technical:

• Making Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream:  I made some batches all by myself, for the first time!  I think I have developed a good sense of proportions for ingredients.  People loved some of the flavors I came up with (see the Penguicon 2011 flavors in comments). Thanks to the helpful people (tweeting flavor suggestions, holding the buckets, stirring, mashing up sage, even making a few batches).  Thanks to Con Suite volunteers for helping us w’ supplies management and all.  Thanks to everyone who enjoyed the ice cream! Next year we’re going to request 2-hour blocks be put in the schedule officially for LN2, so we have sufficient time for batch-mixing and cleanup. We have other ideas to make it even better next year, too (may announce later after we’ve done more planning).
• Co-teaching Learn to Swing Dance! There were about 40 people, some who were completely new to swing dance (most had done at least some sort of dance). We got almost an hour and a half to impart what we knew about leading and following swing dance, and teach some basic moves, to a variety of musical styles. We were so happy to see people picking it up and having fun. Biggest compliment after: one couple asked if we taught locally! Another person asked which local dances we went to! They wanted MORE! What a thrill! Someone also made a point of giving us a shout-out during the con feedback session on Sunday afternoon. Thanks for letting us know you enjoyed it. Big thanks to Ops and Aaron Thul, who saved our bacon and fixed laptop-to-sound-system (cable) for us on short notice (first time teaching swing dance, didn’t realize we needed to specify that).

Over 1200 people attended Penguicon 2011.  Next year, bigger hotel!  I understand Penguicon 2012 will be in Dearborn, MI.

• “The Wachovia presentation this morning appears to have opened some people’s eyes on how things could happen.”  Having been familiar with Wachovia since they were a small NC bank, I wondered what they were up to.
  • Steve Newberger wrote more about it:  [Fields'] analogy: Web 2.0 is this generation’s equivalent of his generation’s company picnic and bowling leagues. Additional critical rationale: mitigate the impact of the maturing, retiring workforce, i.e., the attrition of knowledge assets.  They’re using SharePoint (WSS/MOSS), with extensions for instant messaging (I miss using IM for work) and video blogging (we talked about getting that going at my previous employer — 2-minute service call how-to videos, viewable over mobile devices, anyone? — but didn’t get the resources to get it rolling in time).
  • More important than the technology is Wachovia’s attitude.  From a preview of the talk,  Wachovia’s collaborative environment is designed to attract younger Generation Y employees who expect access to Web 2.0 tools at work. [...] “They’re coming to us with high enthusiasm but encountering arcane tools and bureaucracies,” he said, adding that many young workers’ engagement levels “fall off the table” after about a year on the job. “They are leaving Fortune 100 companies,” he said.  As I said at my previous employer and during my Knowledge Gardening presentation at Penguicon 2007, the ability to use modern, fun, low-entry-barrier collaborative and knowledge sharing tools is a recruiting advantage.
• The CIA presenters recommended starting small, such as with an acronym wiki page (I’ve had success with that approach!), and pointed to an OSS (CIA precursor)  manual from 1944 about how to sabotage organizations and production efforts: Insist on doing everything through “channels”, refer all matters to committees, haggle over precise wordings of communications,  advocate “caution”, and question whether a decision lies within the jurisdiction of the group.  The conflict such behavior would have with the architecture of participation is obvious (Note:  I do think precise wording and formal processes can be useful and important, but relative risks should be considered, and getting bogged down is a risk, too).
• “People get ticked off at twittering and live-blogging during an Enterprise 2.0 conference, just like they do at other events.”   They get ticked off?  I hope no one’s gotten mad at me for tapping on my laptop at presentations.  I guess I can see the negative potential (folks so busy twittering, blogging, taking pictures, etc. that they’re not engaging with the rest of the conferees), but I’d always had more of an attitude of “their loss” when it seems that they’re not fully there.  I suppose if a substantial proportion were doing so, that might take away a bit from the energy of the event (?).

The rest of the time, we went around the table talking about what software we like using on the XO (Opera, Firefox, StarChart, Moon, Speak, Synergy), resources for information and answers (OLPC wiki and forum, OLPC News forum), community jabber servers for collaboration, and peripherals (SD flash cards, USB memory sticks, mice, and keyboards).

After our hour was up, some of us went on to the Computer Lounge, and talked about some XO bugs and fixes, but I had to go on soon to prep for my next panel.

I had chatted with Mako Hill for a couple of minutes up in the con suite the night before, while I was assisting with liquid nitrogen ice cream making, and during the roundtable I loaned him my extra G1G1 laptop , which he had said would be newer than the XO he has. I’m not sure if he used it much or what he thought of the differences, though. I’ll never wash my XO again?

Benjamin Mako Hill

• Benjamin Mako Hill’s entry about Penguicon
• BMH after Negroponte’s remarks

OLPC changes and uncertainty

OLPC developers are not open source fundamentalists

Disruption and Hope

Back to the Roundtable:

• cmdln’s detailed write-up of Mako’s comments at the start
• photo 1
• photo 2

•  mint irish cream
• triple chocolate
• cinammon orange creamsicle
• vanilla raspberry
• another chocolate
• soda slushies

Sunday, the OLPC Roundtable and Fiction Genome panels I participated on went well; I’ll put more details in separate entries.  I got to see the liquid nitrogen splashdown in the pool, too.  I was disappointed that I didn’t actually get to attend anyone else’s technical panels, but it was important to me to get enough sleep to be alert for my panels.  Maybe the third time (next year) will work out better in that respect.

I didn’t make it to the game room except for 5 minutes once, but I did get to play euchre in the con suite Sunday night.  I like it because it’s a *team* card game.  I haven’t gotten to play it much since I  left upstate NY (Rochester).  My partner Bob and I did well at first, but Bill and Gerald caught up and beat us eventually.  It was a nice close game.

Penguicon has a very well-stocked consuite for food (fresh vegetables and sandwich makings, not just snack food), but I highly recommend these two restaurants within a short drive of Troy:

• Elie’s Mediterranean (Birmingham)  - the best of that cuisine I’ve ever had, in a lovely setting (cobalt blue hanging beads, rollaway glass garage door in the front of the store)
• The Inn Season Cafe (Royal Oak) – vegetarian and vegan; listed in Health Magazine’s top 6 US independent restaurants this month.

1.  OLPC Round Table (noon):  XO owners discuss their experiences, demo the XOs, and talk about our perspectives on OLPC and the XO’s past, present, and future.
2. Sequencing the Genome of Fiction:  Having worked at Applied Biosystems, doing configuration management and web support for AB and its sister company, Celera Genomics, I have some understanding of the Human Genome Project and related science (AB was big on science training, yay!).  Being a user of Pandora.com, I have an appreciation for the Music Genome project.  I’ll be bringing my software engineering experience to the table.

My badge:

Paul Frield’s write-up from Thursday and Friday (with pictures)

Other pictures, from nicdanger:

•  Tux working the booth
• Green Table (XOs and the April “Greening the Data Center” issue of LJ)
• Testimonials (booth poster on left, with quotes from federales about Linux and open source)
• We the People (booth poster on right, patriotic Tux with signatures from booth workers and visitors)

Read more on the photo management software presentation:

Ted is presenting a relational DB management system he wrote which uploads photos in photo sets, groups in albums, allows derived photos, stores metadata, tags group photos arbitrarily , and allows fast searching.  Albums can  be exported to websites/media.  I don’t take that many pictures, partly because of  not being one to get around to doing much photo management.  I’m aware of Flickr etc. but do like the idea of photo management software I’d run on my own server.  Needs Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL etc.  But Ted’s Easy Foto Box package can be installed easily on a virtual (or real) machine.

http://www.tux.org/~tbr/easyfotobox/

It’s a bit frustrating that there seems to be more excitement and easier access to XO information at OLPC News (not affiliated with OLPC!) than at laptop.org (=OLPC).  There was talk last night of forming a user group via OLPC News to do our own self-support.  Someone else came up with a better Give One, Get One ad (clearer explanation of benefits to the giver).  Another non-affiliated site is xoforall.com, but I haven’t had a chance to look them over yet.

The audience Friday night was smaller than Saturday, but between Cathy and me, we got a lively discussion going anyway. One comment that interested me came after I mentioned how, in addition to standard text journalling, blogging software packages can make it easy to use them for other purposes (videoblogging for fun or work (installation walkthroughs), tying in with RSS for project management, or tying in with library catalogs to autogenerate a blog entry per book (with library patron commenting ability thrown in for free!)). One audience member said it reminded him of how VisiCalc revolutionized how people looked at and worked with data on computers, partly because what people could use them for was so open-ended.

At the Saturday talk, Gini talked about company communication policies and how to get involved in forming a blog policy if one’s company doesn’t have one. The audience had a lot of horror stories to relate. I mentioned a few articles I’ve read about how blogging can *help* your career if you’re techblogging. Recruiters may look for folks on blogs, or once you get to serious consideration, it may make a difference to your credibility (and show an ability to work with others) if you’ve contributed to discussions via forums or blogs. When the conversation got onto younger bloggers, it turned out Gini and I had both heard an interesting NPR interview with the author of Generation MySpace.

Lessons Learned:

• I had the agenda on my Palm Zire, but it kept powering down (next time, print it or change from the 3-minute power save cycle).
• According to the evidence (someone took pictures at one panel), I need to be more aware of my face and hands during a panel. Smile more, fiddle less.
• Even on a non-controversial panel and with good intentions between panelists, a moderator could help (smoother transitions/time-sharing).

Penguicon overall attendance: over 800
My presentation’s length: 1 hour
Q&A Length: 30 minutes (after my hour-long talk)
# of other events scheduled at the same time: 13?, including the wedding of one of the founders of Penguicon
# of attendees at start of talk: about 20, including professional librarians, knowledge managers, and various open source project participants.
# of people who left before Q&A: Only 1!
# of people who asked questions: about 10, including people who addressed each others’ questions in their questions (i.e., not just a Q&A but a group discussion, which I was happy to foster)

Feedback: One of the folks I gave a dry run to before the con said it was the shortest hour presentation he’d ever heard (yay!). Matt Arnold (head of programming for Penguicon 5.0) said “her presentation and ensuing discussion were stimulating.” Constructive criticism was that there were a couple of times where I was so deep into the material that I didn’t make it clear enough to the audience what the connection was between one of my gardening metaphors and knowledge work. I hope the Q&A helped address that, but that’s something I’d want to rework if I give the talk again anywhere.

I had said I was going to take the slides (which are not standalone; I didn’t want a wall of words behind me distracting the audience from what I was actually saying) and construct blog entries or a wiki section from them. However, one person who’s been published in Linux Journal suggested I turn it into an article for them (perhaps with more of a how-to focus, or more like reviews of different tools). I’m not sure if “we purchase first rights” would preclude conference presentations, blog entries, or what.

If I weren’t going there, though, I might be tempted to run down to NC for another conference, The Future of Learning in North Carolina (Durham). Looks like they’ll have stuff about digital classrooms and game design applications to learning. I haven’t figured out how much of that con will be mere hype repetition, but I do think the immersive, informal, interactive approach to education shows a lot of promise. Case in point: I think there’s a lot of interesting and useful work being done for One Laptop Per Child (beyond the hardware, neat on its own). On the other hand, I’m not linking to them today because of what they’ve done to their site home page, which I find much less friendly (however colorful and graphic it now is) than the last time I was there. Trends can be fun, but when they get in the way, they’re just in the way.

I’m not in their league, but I’ll also be giving a talk:

Knowledge Gardening, Saturday, 4-5:30 pm
How innovators can use open source social software to nurture knowledge and collaboration within an organization. Wikis, blogs, tagging and RSS feeds will be covered, along with reasons why you might choose to set up behind your organization’s firewall (at least initially). No special tech knowledge is needed to attend.

It looks like I’ll also co-panel Blogging Your Life Without Losing Your Job, Or Your Mind with Cathy Raymond (finalizing schedule). And, as I’ve done at a number of science fiction cons in the past, I’ll run (demo) some games. I’ve presented at a company conference (poster session), and I’ve sung solo in front of a crowd, but I’ve never done a presentation or panel like this before. I’m a little nervous, but also pretty jazzed.

• Mining Blog Stories using Community-based and Temporal Clustering
• On the Structural Properties of Massive Telecom Call Graphs (clique v. communities; indivuduals may not know they’re in a “community”; reach is either very small (fewer than 6) or very large (1 million +); indegree/outdegree; even totally anonymized data is of some use, e.g., can tell us how likely word-of-mouth is to work in a given “area”)
• Tracking Dragon-Hunters with Language Models (analyzing scrapes of WoW/other MMORPGs)
• Efficient, Automatic Web Resource Harvesting (OAI-PMH; website alternative to building sitemaps; incremental harvesting of XML metadata; good for intranets; Apache module mod_oai; runs on Linux)
• Pushing Task Relevant Web Links down to the Desktop

One cool thing this conference did was give an hour for poster presenters to present a couple of slides each on what they were going to talk about.  With something like 50 posters, it was very helpful to watch and listen to their soundbites, so I could mark up the poster list (I’d printed it out before attending – it wasn’t distributed in the onsite materials), highlighting some discoveries, and crossing off others which had sounded good (for me) from the titles alone. 

Stats:  there were about 100 attendees, 85% men / 15 % women (by my eye).  Speakers:  Many academics, followed by a fair number of practitioner companies (Microsoft Research Asia, Yahoo, Fuji Xerox).  A few consumers (NIH, me) were just there to soak up what we could.  Perhaps a simple majority of the speakers were from the US, but China wasn’t far behind, then Germany-India-Japan-Taiwan-Italy, and some folks from Canada and Greece.

Weaknesses of presentations:  All too many papers at CIKM were given by substitutes (not the authors) who were unable to respond substantively during Q&As.  Or perhaps I just picked badly; there were usually several paper sessions going on (multi-track).  Too many (1 is too many!) pointless animated slides.  Occasional sociotwaddle (painful when folks wander outside their expertise that way), and in one instance, conclusions drawn from tiny samples and ad hoc methodologies.

A close second was “Geek Spaces” (organization and display of one’s books, art, and collectibles), chiefly due to the enthusiasm of an attendee for the game room project I mentioned (leading to much drafting on paper and brainstorming of possibilities). 

Alas, the Regency Dance was cancelled.  Fortunately, the waltz and tango classes were great.  What does dance have to do with Knowledge Management?  I’ll give you a hint:  buzz, bzzz, buzz…