I’ve been on the Barcamp mailing list and I’ve been following the “post barcamp” discussion. While Barcamp itself was successful, this being the biggest Barcamp ever, in the world; there was discontentment and a longing for improvement in the next iteration of the event (which by the way has been tentatively scheduled for November of this year)

Issues I identified which could have been better or should be next time (This is my opinion and open for discussion)

Main points –

• Too many tracks, too little time. The sheer number of collectives was overwhelming.
• Too many newbies, not enough interaction
• Giving tees on day 2 was a good idea
• Entry fees goes against barcamp philosophy (already agreed upon)

How/what we should change:

Change in facilities –

• Have fewer projectors. Allocate them only who really need it
• Let anyone initiate a discussion. But to make a formal announcement, the initiator needs at least 5 participants(including or excluding the initiator. That’s a no point). Otherwise they can still have the discussion but no formal announcement (via sms)
• In addition to collective charts, have a couple of impromptu talk/discussion charts. Slight conflict with the previous point. Need to resolve that. If we have these, have them in more replications so that participants don’t have to go from one end to the other to check the posters
• Preferably, try to get the rooms/auditorium closer to each other as compared to bcb4

Possible alleviations –

• Don’t prefer to have formal talks by one speaker. Encourage discussions
• But do keep a few slots for formal talks; ‘presentation’ if you want to call it. Call for presentation ppt in advance to filter/approve and pass the presentations and then assign the formal presentation slots. Some might argue that it is against the spirit of barcamp. My opinion is that it’s a barcamp. We can add a limited number of those to mix up types of interaction. There are no formal rules. Let’s define for our convenience
• Noticed that a couple of collectives were trying to be too organized so time management was an issue
• A lot of of talks were talks. And not discussions as it should have been. Demos, prod launches are exceptions
• Educate collective leaders on how to lead more effectively. Encourage more BOFs(birds of a feather)
• Stress on participants that those who are a part of one collective can attend other talks and they don’t necessarily have to sit through all talks to attend just one talk

Lastly, my pics from BCB4 have been uploaded to a Flickr Set.