Evergreen DokuWiki

This website will attempt to compile information from the past years of planning the Evergreen International Conference so that it is available to the current local planning committee.

After the budget is submitted to Software Freedom Conservancy and Oversight Board, the local planning committee may begin using funds as indicated in the budget.

2011 Budget

2012 Budget

Here is a list of potential keynote speakers who were contacted by the 2012 planning committee:

2012 Potential Keynote Speakers

We used Eventbrite for the 2012 Conference and were happy with the reporting function and usability. I would recommend using it again.

Based on the potential attendee survey conducted by the Program Committee, many of the attendees were interested in technical and end user programs so the decision was made to schedule those tracks in the largest rooms.

In 2012, we will be recording the number of participants at each session.

In planning for the 2012 conference, the Program Committee was the only committee to have members of the international community. It’s not a bad idea to try to include members of the international community on the sponsorship and marketing committees as well.

Beginning in August, the program committee sent out a prospective attendee survey to open-ils-general@list.georgialibraries.org, open-ils-documentation@list.georgialibraries.org, open-ils-dev@list.georgialibraries.org to gauge what the prospective audience was interested in for the 2012 conference:

“Hello everyone! The 2012 EG International Conference program committee has created a planning survey for the 2012 conference. All prospective attendees are invited to fill out the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KJG3WSM The goal of this survey is to gather information on what prospective attendees would like to see at the 2012 conference in terms of programs, after conference events, etc. We hope to get responses from across our diverse user group: developers, trainers, administrators and front-line users. Please feel free to share the survey link with colleagues. The survey will close on August 31, 2011. Thank you for your cooperation!”

Results of 2012 Prospective Attendees Survey here

Results of 2011 Attendee Satisfaction Survey here

Using the results from the 2011 Attendee Satisfaction Survey and the 2012 Prospective Attendee Survey, the Program Committee crafted a list of suggested programs for attendees and sent out an email to the open-ils listservs soliciting programs.

The 2012 Planning committee made a PDF and word document available but in the future, I would suggest using an online form.

Reminders were sent out each Friday to the open-ils listservs and the conference fb and twitter pages were updated each week to remind potential presenters to turn in their programs. In 2012, we received 41 programs and had room for 37. The Program Committee was pleased with the programs submitted so we didn’t worry about begging for programs but in the future, you may try different avenues to solicit a larger response.

The Program Committee had several conference calls to organize programs into user tracks (General, Administrative, End User and Technical) and to decide which programs wouldn’t be accepted.

The span of their activity lasted about 5 months and included 4 conference calls.

2012 Sponsorship Application

2012 Sponsorship Manual

Sample Introductory letter

List of vendors contacted by 2011 and 2012 teams

The budget must be in place before setting each of the sponsorship levels and opportunities can be started. We worked off of the 2011 sponsorship documents and created an introductory letter, a manual and an application. Software Freedom Conservancy suggested creating an email which will be received by both them and the local planning committee if a vendor turns in an application.

Vendors that sponsored and exhibited in 2011 were contacted two weeks before everyone else and told that they were the preferred vendors and were being given early bird notice. After two weeks, everyone that was contacted the year before was emailed again.

We worked with the local convention center to get discounts on group events and restaurants. We asked our committee members to plan a pub crawl.

The marketing committee managed the fb and twitter pages throughout the conference planning. If a notice was sent to open-ils listservs, it was also posted on those feeds. Fb and twitter pages were also used to reach out to potential vendors and potential attendees. Marketing committee also analyzed who was registered and reached out to those who hadn’t registered for the conference yet.