This feedback is spread across teams as @Vrinda_Gandhi and I were overseeing the whole event along with volunteer management on the day of. Special thanks to Aditeya from FOSS MEC for helping with volunteer management. Mentioned below are my personal thoughts and observations:
What worked
Volunteers
- We had more than 100 volunteers, the most at any IndiaFOSS. This let us spread responsibilities and assign different owners for things we weren’t able to earlier such as devrooms, livestreaming and photos and short-form videos. In my experience, this was our strongest and most responsible volunteer group so far.
- At least 95% of the volunteers were students. Most volunteers were referred by FOSS Clubs and their leads. This built trust and made early filtering easier.
- Selection was through a form and a video response and I strongly believe we should continue this. In the previous editions, we stuck with people we knew. That put us in a difficult spot, because negative feedback risked losing a club or a city community or even spoiling personal relationship. Not saying that’s how it should work, but unfortunately we’ve seen that happen.
- We gave volunteers small tasks early to find people ready to take initiative. We shared feedback along the way and also parted ways with a few. This avoided problems when we met in person.
Event operations
- The team prepared a detailed run of show for both days. It included a break schedule and a list of floating volunteers by time slot.
- The pre-event briefing worked well. We briefed everyone together, walked the whole group through the venue, then held team-wise briefings. Each team knew what it owned and what it did not. We also briefed them of the escalation matrix.
- Meal lines ran (almost) smoothly. Unlike previous years, F&B volunteers, not the logistics lead, spoke to the vendor on the days. Others handled crowd control and coordinated meal spaces for attendees and speakers.
What to improve
Volunteer management
- Even though, volunteers were on-boarded earlier than usual, we still have work to do here. We can involve them with more tasks so the full time team isn’t collecting sleep debt from weeks before the event.
- The floating volunteer list was shared with the full team but only Vrinda, Aditeya and I were aware or using it. The wider team had to ask us who was free or most times assume that the volunteers were nowhere to be found. We also never told them that a document with floating volunteers existed.
- The briefing was moved to earlier on the day 0 but that change was communicated only a few days in advance. We could have checked with the vendors earlier and made a better decision. While we did end up sending everyone home by 8:30 pm, we can do a better job here.
- Finding accommodation for volunteers is always a heavy task for the logistics team. The upside is that volunteers stay together, close to the venue. This also comes with the risk of them sharing rooms with strangers which ideally is how hostels and dorms work but not the right setup for teenagers that are traveling to a different city for the first time. If possible, we should consider letting volunteers book their own stay, with reimbursement up to a pre-decided limit.
- Budget for free tea/coffee for volunteers at the paid beverages booth.
- We decided on Emcees less than 5 days before the conference. This has been a thing on our list that people have paid least attention too. We look for someone with FOSS United experience, technical knowledge and good at engaging with an audience but forget to keep tabs on suitable people that we meet throughout the year.
Team coordination
- We need every team of the program committee including full time staff to have a publicly visible tracker/checklist of their work. Towards the end, we ended up with things that had no owners and no deadlines on. This list should also be different from the full time task tracker and should be maintained by the head of a subgroup. Example - design has a checklist/tracker that was maintained by Jeswin and was publicly accessible.
- We planned a community booth for swag and snacks. Most of us told attendees about it one-to-one, but it was never set up officially and never communicated to people.
- We planned for the main conference days but missed workshop day logistics, such as drinking water. We fixed it with instant delivery of 10L water cans and dispensers but this should be part of the overall F&B budget and checklist of the conference.
- Several people bought event supplies without a shared list and we ended up with too many of the same item. We should ideally have one person do this. Example - we ended up with too many handwash bottles this time.
Venue and attendee experience
- Workshop room mapping email was sent the morning of Day 0. There was also a confusion on who owns it. While the overall management team should have caught this, we need to make it part of the process that the outreach/content team owns sending emails that they draft unless otherwise communicated.
- Plan for device charging stations for attendees. For a tech conference, this is as basic as water stations.
- Put up a map of the food lines/booths. People did not know there were more lines than the one they saw. A map helps them spread out on their own.
- If we stay at the same size, remove the food line from the German tent. It sits where people queue, and serving or showcasing food tables along the queue is additional hassle to deal with.
- TV remotes were a treasure hunt again. Either ensure one remote per TV or add a strict penalty for the vendor.
- Use the names that the venue has already labelled.. Call the auditoriums “Audis”, not “Halls” and the “Board Room” not “Room 1”. Mixed names caused confusion.
Forms and data
- Collect T-shirt size, social media handles and phone number in the first form we send, whether it is for volunteering or the CFP. We did too many follow-ups in the last few weeks, and many would have been ignored.
- Make speaker phone numbers a required field. As always, we did not know where some speakers were and had to pull in full-time staff to find them. This fortunately did not end up delaying the conference but still isn’t the best experience for volunteers.
Other thoughts/Updates:
- Devrooms have been a win for the conference. Devrooms have resulted in more communities getting involved, new people attending IndiaFOSS and and a lot more variety in terms of content. I have a feeling we should do more devrooms and just a few invited/main track talks. Main tracks should become a smaller component of the program.
- We need a FAQ doc for volunteers which briefs people about ‘Things you need to know as an Attendee/Volunteer’
Adding these here while it’s fresh in my mind. I’ll come back to add/edit as I am reminded.