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Event Planning

Contribution Spaces and Mentoring

Premise

This document serves as a guide for best practices for setting up spaces for contribution events, with a particular focus on the Mentoring spaces.

The following diagrams have been built in Omnigraffle and exported as PNGs, and are also available as PDFs.

Contribution Spaces

The placement of the different spaces, the relationship between them and the other facilities is all quite important for an effective contribution day.

Here we will cover five items. 1. Ideal layout of spaces 1. Worst case conditions of layout of the spaces 1. First Time Contribution Workshop space 1. Mentored Contribution space 1. General Contribution space and the relative sizes

Ideal Layout

Here we have an example of an idea layout (View PDF File):

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Things to note:

  1. All the attendees arrive at the contrib space through a funnel, allowing the greeters to determine who needs to go where.
  2. There is only one point where this happens, so we don’t need to split the greeters up.
  3. The first time contribution space is near the mentored contribution space, and when they finish the workshop, it is easy to direct the attendees to the mentored contribution space. This reduces the number of potential contributors getting lost and allows the first time contributor workshop space to act as overflow for the mentored contribution space (or vice versa).
  4. The general contribution space is relatively close to the mentored contribution space, allowing for some movement back and forth to consult with contributors who may be in that space.
  5. The bathrooms and lunch facilities are nearby and people are not walking past anywhere that might distract them and end up not coming back.

Non-Ideal Layout

This is an example of a situation we would like to avoid (View PDF File):

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This is a rather chaotic situation but not even the worst that could be envisaged!

Issues:

  1. Multiple entry/exit points with different ways to approach the rooms, greeters can’t deal with everyone coming in.
  2. Multiple floors which makes travelling between spaces more complex and more likely to get distracted/run into someone on the way.
  3. After attending the workshop, the attendees need to be directed to a lift, or round to the escalator to go upstairs and then find the right room, rather hard to do so without escorting them.
  4. Bathrooms are away from the rooms and near the doors, so it is a bit more of a temptation to go outside / get distracted.

Even in this situation, the mentored contrib space is at least near the general contrib space, worst would be if even these two spaces are far apart!

First Time Contribution Space

(View PDF of all Room Layouts)

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The intent with this space is to have one or more presenters, with a laptop running a presentation on a projector, while the attendees sit and mostly listen, they do not really need to do much if anything on their computers during this time. The tables are appreciated because some people like to take notes while this is happening, but audience seating is adequate. In fact having tables sometimes does mean people have to scoot their chairs around to face the front as they are expecting to sit at the table normally, which is not the case if we want them to all face the front.

At least two microphones is great in case there are more than one presenter, or if we want to pass the microphone around during Q&A.

Space for about 80+

Mentored Contribution Space

(View PDF of all Room Layouts)

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The intent with this space is to have multiple attendees working together at tables, at least 5 per table, with a total capacity of about 100-150. * We do need a projector and microphone to present if there are any announcements to be made or to show any assets or documents while the session is active, and to present a live commit if one takes place, but we do not need attendees to be facing the screen the whole time. * We also do not need a lectern here if a table is available, as this would be mostly a seated position. * We DO need power strips at each table. * Should also have a writable sign in the middle of each table so people can write the name of the issue/project they are working on.

General Contribution

The relationship between General / Mentored and First Time Contribution Spaces is somewhat of a 4 : 2 : 1 ratio

The general contribution space does not have any audio visual requirements. It does need power strips at each table though.

Relative sizes of contribution spaces

(View PDF of all Relative Sizes)

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