Hi everybody,
together with Gregor, I've written down some best practices on how to
organize DebConf BoF, and posted them at:
http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/07/DebConf_BoF_HOWTO/
(Full text is attached to this mail for offline readers; it's in
Markdown format.)
Comments and improvements are mostly welcome. In fact, in the long term
it would be nice to actually write a "DebConf BoF HOWTO" and have it
somewhere on the DebConf wiki, although it's probably premature now.
Volunteers? :-)
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
[[!meta date="Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:48:46 -0400"]]
Here at [DebConf10](http://debconf10.debconf.org) the
[schedule](http://penta.debconf.org/dc10_schedule/) is starting to get really
packed of events, which is great! About a half of those events are
<strong><acronym title="Birds of a Feather">BoF</acronym></strong>s (in the
IETF sense), i.e. **discussion sessions** among people interested in specific
topics. (Other conferences use "BoF" to refer to impromptu, non-scheduled, and
spontaneous events, while at DebConf we have traditionally submitted, reviewed,
and scheduled BoFs in advance.)
As most DebConf regulars, I've attended quite some BoFs in the past and I share
with others the impression that the **quality** and **usefulness for the
project** of BoFs varies substantially from BoF to BoF. That's why I'd like to
share a **BoF recipe**, which comes from possibly the
[best organized BoF I've ever attended](https://penta.debconf.org/dc8_schedule/events/238.en.html). As
it happens with all good recipes (and with free software), I've took the
liberty of customizing it a bit.
<hr />
# DebConf BoF HOWTO
## have a coordinator
A good BoF should have a **coordinator**, which is usually (but not
necessarily) the person who proposed the BoF in the first place. The role of
the coordinator encompasses at least 2 tasks: preparing the BoF in advance
(read below) and moderating the discussion to ensure everybody get a chance to
participate.
## prepare in advance
A good BoF is more than just getting together, vaguely knowing the BoF topic,
and ... discuss. Mind you, it *might* work very well that way too, but the
chances of having a successful BoF are much higher if attendees arrive
*prepared*.
That is quite simple to achieve. It just takes the BoF coordinator to prepare
some
[**working questions**](http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20080712.235543.c0310e7e.en.html)
and/or *detailed* discussion topics, and advertise them as such. That way
potential participants can make up their minds, recall experiences that they
want to share, note down comments they want to bring into the discussion,
etc. In my experience, the BoF time will then be used in a much more
productive, exciting, and ultimately *fun* way.
Most BoFs can also benefit from *a few* introductory slides on the BoF topic,
to ensure all participants start from a common ground. The last slide could
contain a brief recap of the working questions, so that the audience have them
handy.
## don't be exclusive
Debian is not a company and Debian contributors are not employees, therefore we
cannot *expect* all relevant people to attend a specific BoF, just if they had
to. As usual, the risk of cutting off community members who cannot attend
should be mitigated as much as possible. To that end, **minutes** are just
great; after the BoF, minutes should be posted where appropriate, and possibly
uploaded to Penta as event attachments.
... but taking minutes is just boring and not everyone is good at that
<small>(for instance, yours truly used to suck at taking minutes, even if I'm
trying to get better ...)</small>. If you have a trusted participant which is
good at taking minutes, great, go for it!
If you don't, use **collaboration**. During past DebConfs as well as at
[UDS](http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-m/) this year, I've been shown a nice way of
doing that. It takes a dedicated projector in the BoF room showing some
real-time, collaborative editing facility
(e.g. [gobby](http://packages.debian.org/sid/gobby-infinote)). With such a
setup, people usually just start taking minutes collaboratively, although
explicitly inviting the audience to do that is a very good idea.
Ideally, the room should have two projectors, one for supporting slides,
another for collaborative minutes taking. In case there is only one, as it is
usually the case for DebConf, it's probably better to use it for minutes and
switch to them as soon as supporting slides are over.
<hr />
# gobby.debian.net for BoF minutes at DebConf10
For DebConf10, the DebConf team has setup a gobby (infinote) server at
`gobby.debian.net`. Just do the following in order to be ready for
collaborative minutes taking:
# apt-get install gobby-0.5
$ gobby-0.5 -c gobby.debian.net
<small>(Note: you shouldn't use the non versioned `gobby` package as it uses a
different protocol and doesn't support undo, which is quite risky; see
[[!debbug 590753]] for more background.)</small>
As the naming convention for DebConf10 minutes, using document names that start
with `dc10-` sounds sensible.
<hr />
# comments welcome!
So, what do you think of the above suggestions? Do you have further best
practices to share on BoF organization at DebConf? Leave a comment or mail me.
In the end it would be nice to author a proper "DebConf BoF HOWTO" document for
further reference.
<small>Thanks to [Gregor](http://info.comodo.priv.at/blog/archives/cat_5/) for
his feedback on early versions of this post.</small>
[[!tag lang/english planet-debian debconf debconf10 debian howto]]
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