Organizers SHOULD make the event staff easily be identifiable by whatever possible means. Uniforms are not necessary, but there should be some sort of visual aid to do this.
In the past we have provided:
- Staff Only Shirts/T-Shirts
- Staff Only Lanyards
- Armbands
to make it easy to identifiy who on the venue is a staff. This could probably be achieved by other means (and if there are better ways, please let us know), but so far we believe that the armband and/or T-shirts are the best way. Do note that armbands have one major advantage over T-shirts, in that while T-shirts usually get dirty after one day of usage and team members tend to not wear it everyday on a multi-day conference, armbands usually do not have this problem.
You SHOULD arrange enough staff to accomodate most, if not all of the following roles:
There SHOULD be staff in front/around a particular room to guide the audience in/out of each room that the talks will be held. This is an easily forgotten, but important role: Attenddees are not necessarily acquainted with your venue, and often times they will be lost and/or unsure of the room that they want to go to -- even in the presense of enough postings on the wall. Having a staff as both a visual sign and a being able to ask if this is the right room makes things much easier for the attendees.
There SHOULD be ways for audiences to tell if a particular room is full or still has room for additional audience. This should clearly be announced before hand.
TODO: Add concrete examples: Put up signs, use WiFi connection information to approximate the occupancy, etc.
If possible, announce current status for each room on online media such as twitter/slack/IRC, so that attendees can decide if they can/should take the time to move to a different room
Handling conference swags is an important part of conferences that has sponsorship. As an organizer keep in mind that it is an important responsibility for you to make sure that as many attendees as possible go home with your sponsors' swag: this is at least part of the reason your sponsors are sponsoring you.
To maximize the chances of your attendees taking your swag with them, it is recommended that you prepare a set of swags (possibly in a bag so it's easy to take home) that can easily be picked up.
There are services that do this for you before hand: you send them boxes of swags from various sponsors and bags to place them in, and they do the manual labor of putting them together in one piece.
If for whatever reason you cannot afford to outsource this to such services, you will have to arrange your staff to do this for you.
TODO: Add ways we have been doing this?
- Special needs: Halaal, Vegan, Allergies.
- Quantity: do NOT order "just the right amount". Always order 10%~20% more. While leftover food should be minimized, inadequate suplly is never a good idea
- Know your audience: Are they there to eat a meal? to drink and socialize? just for snacks?
If there's time for questions, make sure the MC asks the audience for takers. If there are none, DO NOT keep the speaker on stage more than you have to. Please try to minimize the awkward silence that the speaker has to endure by taking the initiative to end the session at the approrpriate moments.
Lightning talks require special type of caring: You should not just expect speakers to show up and have everything magically work.
- Have a list of speakers in the expected order ready.
- Make sure to create a time slot ahead of the session to allow speakers to plug into the projectors and make sure they have connectivity.
- Make sure to call the speakers to do the above connectivity check before the alloted time slot. If anybody has not showed up, and they have not done the connectivity check, call them up again.
- Gather your speakers close to the stage before the session starts.
- If you have a gong ready, make sure to practice hitting it a couple of times before hand.
- Gongs should be rang at the end of the talk, regardless of if the speaker reached the 5 minute limit or not. Hit the gong softly if the speaker ended early, and firmly if they reached the time limit.
- It is the responsibility of the staff to give the speakers the go sign. DO NOT wait them to ask you.
- If possible, consider having time fillers between lightning talks, when the speaker takes time to connect their equipment.
| Name | URL | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 丸福サービス | http://www.maruhuku.co.jp/ | 袋詰め等 |