After reading Neil Crosby’s post on the people who had a ticket but didn’t show up for BarCamp London 5, I began to write up some thoughts as a comment to that post. As often happens, it turned into more than a comment, so here are my thoughts on the problem of people claiming a BarCamp ticket and not showing up on the day.
Show me the money
One suggestion is that tickets should be paid for up-front, perhaps with the money being refunded to attendees on the day (or given to a charity). My thoughts are that charging just doesn’t work. Check the front desk of any major conference during the morning coffee break and observe how many badges are still waiting to be collected – that’s at £300 or £400 a pop. The act of paying for a ticket in advance (with good intention) and deciding to bail on the event nearer the time aren’t closely connected enough for people to stress about it.
The only way to make a fee work is if it’s in the form of a fine for not showing up, so that there’s a new financial consequence to their actions – but that’s aggressive and hard to enforce.
Ask for presentation outlines
My suggestion to make sure that only genuinely interested people claim tickets would be to continue to issue tickets as happens now, but not confirm the place until a presentation outline has been submitted. Let people go ahead and claim a ticket, but set a deadline a couple of weeks before the camp by which presentation outlines are to be sent in and verified. No outline submitted, and the ticket gets released back into the pool.
Outlines wouldn’t need to be set in stone or final – but should demonstrate some thought has been put in. It’s one of the few explicit rules of BarCamp that presentations shouldn’t be prescheduled, so the outlines wouldn’t be published and heaven forbid judged or put into a time table. They’d simply be a demonstration to the ticket issuer that the applicant is genuinely committed to attending. Plus it’d help attendees get a head-start on their presentation.
Make more room
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. No-shows are only a problem if spaces are limited and demand outstrips supply. Therefore one way to tackle the problem is to make sure there’s enough space for everyone who wants to come. That probably means that it couldn’t be held in an office building – so we need to be more creative. Who ever said it needed to be in an office building? Or in a building at all?
Make more BarCamps
Places are hotly contested because BarCamps don’t come around that often, so if one is happening lots of people want to be there. Therefore, another approach would be to get back to basics, simplify and make it easier to put BarCamps on more regularly.
The first BarCamp was laid on in a matter of days. Recent London BarCamps are massively pre-planned events that appear (from the outside) to expend a lot of time and energy in having a sponsor for every meal, drink and crap an attendee takes. Free lunch is nice, but I’m equally happy to buy or bring a sandwich. Having somewhere for people to sleep is important (that genuinely does keep the cost of attending down), but I’m not convinced even having wifi is essential.
Announce that you’re holding a BarCamp THIS weekend, and people are likely going to be able to commit with certainty to being there or not. And if you’ve reduced the effort to a point where it’s possible to announce a BarCamp for this weekend, then it should be possible to put them on more frequently, enabling more people to attend.
Make it easy to return tickets
Of course, there will always be those who genuinely intend to come along, but then either change their mind or circumstances preclude it. For those people, we should make it really easy for any ticket-holder to either re-assign their ticket to someone else (a friend or colleague) or to release it back. That might take some software (for assigning and releasing tickets) but we’re good at that stuff. Make it open source and let any BarCamp organiser use it.
Even if a ticket-holder changes their mind on the morning of the event, if it’s super easy to release a ticket then they’re more likely to do it. If someone else (let’s call them a prospector) can then claim the released ticket online, they may be able to get along still and make good use of it. Send an email out a couple of days before (as suggested elsewhere) with a link to release the ticket if it’s unwanted.
Day tickets
The last factor is a bit of speculation, based on my own experience. Signing up for a BarCamp sounds like a lot of fun – a whole weekend of geeking out, camping out (or in) and generally having a lark. However, come Friday afternoon when you’re feeling tired from a week in the office, the idea can be slightly less appealing.
There’s a presentation to finish (so there goes Friday night), then all day and late into Saturday night, a few hours sleep, and all day Sunday. Then that’s it. Weekend’s gone, you’ve had fun but are exhausted and facing the prospect of a fast approaching Monday morning back in the office when really all you need is another weekend. It’s the primary reason I’ve not applied for a BarCamp ticket the last few times – I feel like an entire weekend is too much to commit to, and if I only show up for one day I’m depriving someone else of a space.
Perhaps if other people are the same, we could consider either running one-day events (which might also make venue-sourcing easier) or alternatively making single-day tickets available alongside the regular weekend tickets. If a weekend ticket holder doesn’t show up on Saturday morning, limit the damage by releasing the other half of their ticket as a day ticket for a prospector to snap up.
For a typical BarCamp London of around 100 places, 50 could be released as weekend tickets, and then 50 for each day. You could juggle the allocation on the fly to meet demand. This would offer perhaps 50% increased capacity, but also create more flexible tickets that might enable more people to get along. And I think if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the more people who are able to attend and contribute, the better.
I don’t expect everyone to agree to these ideas – often the ideas that lead on from further discussion are more the useful ones anyway. But I strongly believe we shouldn’t be afraid of mixing things up. There aren’t very many rules to a BarCamp (check them out) and none of them relate to tickets or format or venues or sponsorship. It’s all about what people bring and how they share it – so lets stay focused on that, and make the event serve the content.
Comments
Certainly in my planning I ensured that I kept in touch with all booked attendee’s that they still were planning on coming. Indeed I got an load of people who had booked up to the guest list tickets when people told me they weren’t attending.
Pre-booking in presentation idea’s is something I thought about but unfortunately I can see that coming in for grief from wanna-be attendee’s who get told their idea’s were interesting enough.
I am aware that people don’t really like the “commercialisation of barcamps” – but ultimately if we want to have bigger and better spaces for them commercial help is totally required (large offices aren’t free – even if we are talking about the hosting companies office as there are staffing costs and what not). The problem is that the people who run the building seem to want to know who is attending a good time in advance – for safety and security planning. So people who drop out late generally can’t get their tickets reallocated.
It’s a tricky problem for sure – but I can certainly say people are trying their best at ensuring it’s not a huge huge problem going forward…
I seem to recall there was a 10-20% no-show rate at Barcamp Manchester earlier in the year. I’m surprised that the percentage seems rather higher for the London event.
I agree with your “Make it easy to return tickets” point. People don’t generally want to take tickets they know they won’t use – so they’d probably like to register their non-attendance if it meant someone else could get in instead. I’m not so sure on having lots more events. That’d help the problem you’re describing, but would probably make the audience less diverse. I suspect there are people who travel from afar to go to BarCampLondon (at least, I know there were several people in the Geekup group ‘ere oop North who were considering going) and if there’s one every week or whatever, that sort of pilgrimage is less likely – we’ll just go to our local ones.
Let me be very clear that I’m not suggesting that presentations be judged in order to get a ticket. That would be terrible and exclude all the wrong people. It should just be an outline of points the presenter thinks they’d like to cover – as long as it makes sense, they get their place confirmed.
How about: overbook the tickets, and make them a non-guaranteed spot at the barcamp.
So you sell 150 tickets, first 100 people actually get in. This will motivate people to A: come, and B: come early
This isn’t very well thought out probably full of holes, but what if you just said “first come first serve”. This event allows X amount of people. Day of the doors are open until that number goes through. If anyone is interested in hanging around it is, one out, lets one person in.
Barcamps have changed massively. They were perhaps a leader in the massive uptake of “community lead” events, but as we have learnt, the initial rules and ideology are only one way of doing this. The problem is, Barcamp is being used as a word for any community lead event, even if they’re not Barcamps.
Have a look at Ruby Manor for something that could easily be called a barcamp, but isn’t really, and so therefore doesn’t say it is. It’s Yet-Another-Community-Conference.
So next time someone says “The problem with BarCamp” – and suggests a solution, perhaps it’s because the audience or focus for the event isn’t best suited to a BarCamp, but something else. Absolutely no problem with that, neither with the event or the BarCamp rules. The community event space is now big enough to cope with more than one event type.
(I realise that this sounds like I’m nattering on a complete tangent about needing more buzzwords. Perhaps we do, perhaps it’s something deeper. I’m all out of thought.)
Cash up-front makes sense – the Barcamp trend of not showing up is mirrored in a number of free evening talks – like Stu’s WSG meetings.
The presentation outline – that will be gamed. Just rip off any presentation that already exists on slideshare. Just sounds like an administration nightmare.
The day tickets is a great idea. I don’t like camping over so sometimes I come in again for the second day on Sunday (despite the reduced train service), but sometimes I don’t feel like spending a Sunday this way.
The real solution is much more BarCamps to the extent that they are not special, thus reducing the compulsion to get in on the action at any costs. That will also have the upside of bringing in a more diverse group of people, along with more diverse interests – hopefully less technical more creative.
To be honest, I feel that people who signed up and didn’t attend, if they sign up for the next BarCamp (if they are once every few months or so), drop them straight into the waiting list, regardless of whether there are tickets available or not. Maybe not just the next BarCamp, but all of them – but that might be a little harsh.
Maybe using something like live.yahoo.com to broadcast talks in BarCamp (with the permission of the speaker of course) will help alleviate the demand to be at BarCamp or miss out. The first Brighton BarCamp I saw a few sessions this way – just needs a webcam and a microphone.
Mike.
On the subject of submitting outlines in advance; that’d have ruled me out. I attended both days, but didn’t have a talk planned beforehand. One thing that has emerged as a theme of BarCamps in the past is that ideas for presentations and discussions can sometimes be bourne out of the melting pot of the first day, to be presented on the second; I had this in mind, and had a loose idea for what I wanted to talk about, but nothing firmly pegged down. As it turned out, I didn’t end up presenting at all; I got distracted by various other talks and so I ended up more of a spectator (although I did waste several hours trying to put up web-based schedule).
I’m personally inclined to believe charging would stop the majority of no-shows. Comparing BarCamp to a professional conference isn’t quite fair: a lot of people attending the latter won’t have paid for this themselves either, and the likely reason for non-attendance is business pressures (two @media tickets at my office went unused this year because we were just too busy). In the case of BarCamp attendees, this money would come from their own pocket. The important thing is to stop people whose attitude is well, I don’t know if I’ll go, but I’ll sign up anyway. A small attendance charge might be what it takes.
@Cristiano: I’m sure those individuals travelling from a long way away (who I seem to recall you were rather in favour of?) would like that rule if their flight / travel was delayed.
I really wanted to come to BarCamp5, but the short release windows meant that i missed the ticket offerings. Dispute pestering folks for the dates frequently.
I tend to lean towards the bigger venue idea, it means more people, more diversity, more content. One of the best bar camps for me, was the one at the BT offices which was a large venue.
Overbooking – really bad idea!
I know this article is all about people not turning up but if you overbook and everyone did – EPIC FAIL!!!!
You know some percent of people won’t turn up, so as long as you have a good idea what range this rate might possibly be, the obvious solution is to overbook and the problem is gone, no need to force people to do silly things like presentation outlines (really horrible idea, I never have any idea what I’m going to talk about until a few days before the event) or fines trying to reduce dropout rates. Just talk to organizers of previous BarCamps and find out what likely rates might be. And in case more people show up than you expected, try getting an extra room or two somehow (not a big deal if some people miss free pizza or tshirt).
I’m surprised by how few BarCamps are there in London. You just need some office space over the weekend plus wifi, both of which should be really plentiful these days, but getting a ticket to any BarCamp seems almost impossible. What’s the showstopper?
We are running a BarCamp here in Washington, DC this weekend. We sent a note out a few days ago asking those that could not make to reply back so we could give their space to someone else that is on the waiting list.
I think a good idea would be post the date, time, location, etc. weeks in advance and tell everyone that a week or ten day before we will be opening registration until all the spots are filled. This would cut down on people just getting tickets for themselves and others hoping they can make it when the time comes.
I also like the idea of creating a system to give your ticket up to a friend , co-worker, etc.
Thanks for picking up the subject and running with it, Drew.
I love the idea of day tickets as an option. Even though for me a huge part of the experience of BarCamps is the overnight portion, you’re right that going from work on a friday to a full weekend of BarCamp and then back to work on monday just isn’t for everyone. Allowing for single day as well as full weekend tickets would hopefully allow people to sign up for an experience they would be comfortable with, and therefore have more people actually turn up.
@Tomasz – Anecdotally, the showstopper is getting insurance for a group of about 100 essentially unknown people staying overnight in a building space that generally wouldn’t be set up to cope with that. Single day events would be a lot easier to organise because it’s easier to get insurance for what’s essentially a day conference, but then you would lose out on the bonding and conversation that occurs overnight. But maybe that’s a sacrifice that should be made in order to organise more of these types of events and therefore reduce the demand that occurs when they’re announce currently.
Interesting aside before I come to another point. The North has quite a different take on barcamps interestingly. Their have been quite a lot in the likes of Leeds, York and Manchester but the majority have been one day affairs, or didn’t lay on accommodation on site. At first I wasn’t sure about the value of this but it does massively reduce the cost and admin overhead. The Newcastle BarCamp I was involved in putting on was in an Art Gallery in a converted warehouse so other types of venues can definitely work.
I agree with Ben I think about paying. It’s at a weekend and generally on personal time and cash so it’s not quite the same problem as a bigger conference.
The problem is probably London. The first London BarCamp was lavish and oversubscribed. That has continued for the past 4. It’s not the fault of big companies – it just happens that it’s the big companies that employ the people who organise barcamps in London. People travel miles for these things, where as the regional barcamps have tended to have more of a local feel, generally organised by ad-hoc individuals. Smaller london barcamps would have to be fast turn around guerilla affairs – probably distancing themselves from BarCamp London in a weird way. But then you don’t have the big mix of people from all over europe coming along.
An interesting idea having one day tickets. There have been many people who have only turned up for one day and I did wonder if they were blocking someone else from turning up on the second day.
I will say that I don’t like the presentation outline idea. Although I truly believe everyone should run a session, it feels restrictive for people to have to submit all but the most basic of details before hand.
I have put most of my other thought in a blog entry.
One thing that I have thought of reading another blog is….. why don’t we ask the people who did not turn up why they did not, why they did not hand back the ticket, and how we could prevent one of these happening next time.
In the rush to find out what’s wrong with BarCamps, I think we’re forgetting the original premise—decentralised social conferences. The fact is that people have been somewhat spoiled by the plush offices and laid-on food that the big companies put on for them, and thus are naturally hesitant about organising their own “unconference”. If the BarCamp model doesn’t fit their needs/requirements, they can always organise their own “rebel” unconference. It doesn’t have to have a huge queue, slick wifi, and free Pret sandwiches to be a success—some would argue without those it would automatically be a success.
That said, I think one day tickets would be awesome, doubly so since it encourages people who don’t know the schedule beforehand to make the most out of whatever they turn up to. Would be a very different flavour from the “I’m booking for day 1 to see such and such” crowd at regular conferences.
Following on from Gareth’s comment – I think the guys and gals up North have BarCamp right. They are supposed to be local events, heavily attended by people who are very local. There’s far too much hype around London Barcamps and they become these ‘Must attend’ events (or ‘must-be-seen-to-be-attending’ events).
I’m astonished by the number of people who travel long distances regularly to attend Barcamps in ‘major destination hubs’ – that’s no different to a major conference with named/invited speakers. BarCamp is supposed to be grassroots – not about famous people who speak on conference circuits, but about real people with real lives sharing the things they are passionate about. It’s not about conference speakers, or about fame.
So the solution taken on up North is quite a viable one – make Barcamps so ubiquitous. Maybe single day events. Not these highly anticipated events. We have @media and “Future of {some buzzword}” events for famous people.
We charged a fiver for BathCamp (which got you a t-shirt), and most people who signed up actually attended (I’ve asked Mike Ellis to look at the actual numbers). This was the same as BarCampBristol last year (which I also helped with); we thought £5 was small enough to be affordable while big enough to be a commitment.
The vast majority of people who couldn’t make it either told us of their own volition, or when asked, and we passed their places on to other people in the waiting list.
BathCamp wasn’t exclusively local people, but that stems from the fact that its focus started out as a museums/cultural sector thing (but later diversified). Several BarCamp veterans said how much they enjoyed it, though :)
So yeah, keep it small, keep it local. These big BarCamps have almost turned into the thing that BarCamp was set up in opposition to. We’re weird like that, us humans.
In Washington, DC, the first BarCamp was 100+ people in three conference rooms at a local company. This year we are going to have 200+ in five rooms at a college. Our BarCamp’s have only been one day fares, since it is difficult in this town to find a space that is free and you are able to get into the location on the weekend without nine forms of ID. We plan on going out after to continue the talking between attendees.
We also have not had the number of speaking slots to allow everyone speak, but it seems a majority of the people are a bit leery of having to talk in front of large groups anyway.
We are looking at a better way to give out tickets and keep costs down, so we don’t need as many sponsors or can have them twice a year instead. Currently we provide breakfast, lunch, t-shirt, and snacks. Looking to see people wouldn’t mind cutting back on those so we could rent conference rooms someplace and have more speakers.
Hoping all goes well this weekend.
Your suggestions on a one-day ticket just make sense. There should be a pricing model offered that either allows you to participate just one day or buying a ticket for additional days at lower fee. Therefor the interested people should know what to expect on the chosen day(s). So the presentation outline is a good idea from this point of view. It makes it easier to organize the schedule and the thematic operation.
Considering Alistair´s suggestions attendees should not be “speak or don’t attend”-blackmailed, since some people just don´t like to speak but listen and learn. And some people just don´t know beforehand what to speak about, so there could be an extra time for “free” speakers.
Anyway I really dislike the Idea of overbooking events. Just compare it to a booked flight. If you are no-show it´s your problem. Maybe it sounds cruel, but life punishes those who come too late/weren´t able to manage their attendance.
Perhaps the easy to return your ticket software is the best idea and combined with all the other suggestions BarCamps ought to be nice again.