Events #2

We are busy people, always wanting more, living a fast life. It's easy to imagine that business is very demanding nowadays and failing fast is a very important thing - there is no time to measure everything and spend months on product design when no one knows if it's even going to succeed.

For these situations hackathons were introduced. All you need is a room with office stuff like tables and chairs, the Internet connection and 24-54 hours of hard work. The most popular hackathon is named Startup Weekend. During such a weekend people have 54 hours to work on their MVP - a minimal viable product that will be presented to investors. There is no time to polish every detail so people need to focus on what's the core of their business idea and they need to make it work. It begins with pitches, where an individual with an idea tries to tell in 90 seconds why other people (designers, programmers or other valuable resources!) should join his/her team and explains how this idea will be turned into some product. After teams are formed, hard work begins, some people work for all 54 hours straight and it's possible thanks to caffeine running through their veins and passion present at the venue. Typically, hackathons are limited by the work-specific requirements (Internet and electricity access) and are held in universities or offices. Despite these limitations sometimes there are even hundreds of people taking part in this crazy game.

Of course there are more types of hackathons. SocHack.pl is famous for events which connect developers with people from NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and other activists. Together during events such as SocHack: Edu or Random Hacks of Kindness these people are working on solving real problems proposed by NGOs and local communities. Projects I remember from previous meetings include: an online map for places to leave old batteries, a website for exchanging tips for people with cancer and their families, a handbook about privacy on social media, a map of bike routes in Warsaw and many more.

The picture below shows me with some friends during the Startup Weekend Warsaw, November 2011. The photo is presented thanks to the courtesy of Grandessa.

Live-demo

There is a time when people get bored of watching slides over and over again and want to see something more dynamic and a live-demo is a type of presentation which is supposed to fulfill this desire. No slides, all action - this is the main principle of live-demo.  Demos may be dedicated to writing software in front of audience - line by line - as you can expect - it's VERY difficult. But it's not only about software, it may be repairing  a car or other activity which presents some real-time challenges that people can find in their everyday life. We can say that a failure is something thathappens quite often during demos - very often something is going wrong and the speaker needs to fight with entropy :)

The photo taken during one of live-demos. As you can see there are some lines of code presented there. Photo by AppCamp.pl

Q&A session

Sometimes during a meeting there is somebody with very deep knowledge on a certain topic, but the audience is so fragmented in their competence that it's difficult to target all their needs in one presentation. A questions and answers session is a good way to address totally different questions and get immediate answers to problems people are concerned about. It's also more personal and by asking a clever question attendee can get some attention himself/herself.  It's very popular to add Q&A session at the end of the presentation, no matter if it's a conference, a barcamp or a lecture.

This is how waiting in the queue to have a chance to ask a question may look like:

Copyrights:  The Guardian.

Questions:

Have you ever attended any hackathon or known about one? If so - what was its name and what was it about?

What do you think about Q&A sessions? Have you ever tried to ask a question in public? What tips would you give to people who are too shy to ask a question this way?

What do you think about events organized by our Institute?

Events

If you want to learn something new and you don't like spending time in front of books, but rather meet other people you can learn from, there are many ways of doing that. There are a few types of events one can attend to and polish his/her skills.


The most obvious choice is a conference. Nowadays it's probably the most popular way to meet a large number of people who are interested in some topic and willing to share their knowledge. To enter a conference you often need to pay ($100-...) but you get at least one day of lectures, dinner and a chance to meet people from the industry or even talk with that famous speaker you listened to. Most likely you will also receive a cool T-shirt with the conference logo and a lot of leaflets from sponsors... Conferences tend to be held at business venues - and it's something that attracts professionals - you can expect air conditioning, excellent service and an easy way to find the place.



The photo below was taken during a TED conference - as you can see - a lot of people and a well equipped indoor. [1]






Of course as long as there are conferences, there will be events created as something completely opposite. That's how barcamps were born. Barcamps, sometimes called “unconferences” are held in many crazy places, pubs, clubs, open-air - it doesn't really matter where they take place. The most important things are: sharing and interaction. During a conference it's rare to see somebody arguing with a speaker, it's quite common during a barcamp - people are encouraged to disagree, talk and learn through that something new. It's one of the most important rules of barcamp - there is no invisible wall between the audience and the speaker - they are on the same level, but the speaker just leads the discussion and moderates it if necessary. Comparing to conferences, barcamps' talks tend to be shorter (~30mins) and you shouldn't be surprised that it may be quite loud during the talk because people talk between themselves, drink beer and network.



Below: typical a barcamp - beer, a bit of chaos and people tweeting about the event. [2]




For some people a barcamp is still too long form of presentation and they think that speakers should be limited in a very specific way. A couple of different formats emerged by following this idea. Pecha Kucha, Ignite or Lighting Talks are the names of some of the events which limit the number of slides and time for every single slide during the talk. Good example is Pecha Kucha where speakers need to give a talk having only 20 slides which are static images and after every 20 seconds, a slide changes into the next one. As you can easily calculate - every topic is presented in less than 7 minutes, but don't even think that these constraints make your presentation easier to prepare. In fact, it's much more difficult. As Mark Twain once said: “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”



The picture below depicts a speaker during his Pecha Kucha presentation. [3]





[1] [ All rights reserved by TED Conference

[2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/_teecee/4378523984/sizes/m/in/photostream/

[3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/pechakuchabarcelona/6169735228/sizes/m/in/photostream/



Questions.

Have you ever attended a conference? What was it about? Did you enjoy it? How about different events? Maybe a Barcamp or workshop?
Do you know any other kind of event where people share their knowledge? What is it about? What kind of presentations are shown there?
Have you ever thought about organizing an event by yourself? What's the topic you were interested in? Were you successful? If you aren't a type of person who enjoys organizing stuff, tell us what's the best way of learning for you?