Feeling Dispersed?
I’ve been busy this week, since tomorrow XP-Day Benelux 2003 is taking place. I did not know exactly what was going to happen this week, since this is the first conference me and my co-organizers put together, but I had a hunch it was going to be hectic. And it is.
Most of the preparation is done individually, by organisers dispersed over several places in The Netherlands, Belgium and France (and sometimes the states). Most of the communication is taking place through e-mail and Internet Relay Chat meetings. It turns out, that often coordination of the work is more work than the work itself… I just put the session descriptions from the website into a document. That took me about twenty minutes, which was much less than deciding who was going to print them 
. I’m sure we’ll find ways to do this more efficiently in the future…
My favourite way of organizing is still doing work co-located, as for instance this picture from a program committee meeting shows: 
Nynke Fokma, Peter Schrier and Vera Peeters working on the conference program
Modifying the conference program is quick and easy during a pc-meeting. We take the latest version from our website (yes, the website is conventient for broadcasting the program to participants and session organisers), transfer it to post-its, and juggle around the program on a whiteboard. We then take a photograph of the end-result, and someone (usually Vera) ensures the broadcasted program reflects the one on the whiteboard.
So, I’m almost off to the conference location, to do a last check of the rooms, the internet connection and maybe do some set-up work already. May-be I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll put some pictures up somewhere next week.
