EuRuKo 2009 Barcelona 9-10 May

EuRuKo 2009 videos, ou yeah!

fguillen.mail@gmail.com (Fernando Guillén) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:23:00 GMT

With a little delay, and we are sorry for that, we already can offer to every of you the videos of the talks on the EuRuKo2009 conference.

It are stored on the blip.tv online video service under the user 'euruko', our idea is that this user will be use for the future organization teams to upload the videos of the next EuRuKo conferences.

If you see some mistake on the descriptions or whatever other comment about the videos please let us know on the comments of this post.

Lessons learned organizing EuRuKo 2009

jaimeiniesta@gmail.com (Jaime Iniesta) — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:31:00 GMT

So, EuRuKo 2009 is over and it's time to begin organizing EuRuKo 2010! We've set up a little document to pass the Krakovian team some lessons that we learned along the way.

As this information might be of interest to more people out there organizing conferences (hello Satim!), we thought it would be better to post this on the blog. So there it goes:

Start early, move often

We started to talk and move things many months before, using our mailling list fequently. We think this helped a lot to sum up ideas, avoid mistakes, and have a clear target. We went public and set up the international list two or three months after we started our internal discussions. Once you go public (after choosing the venue is a good moment) people like to have reports often about how is everything going.

Conference outline

The first thing you need to do is to agree in the format of the conference. This is up to the organizers, but EuRuKo is traditionally a small, cheap, community-oriented, one-track conference. And we personally found out in Barcelona that Matz prefers to preserve that format, he likes it.

Our conference had 250 people, 30 euros, one-track, ... those are just our choices. You can do 230 or 180... is really up to you.

Also you didn't feel much of a sponsor pressure right? No sponsored talks, no sponsors in the t-shirt... Those were choices we did.

Venue

The venue is the most important thing you need to figure out. Stuff started to flow after we closed the deal with the venue, until then you don't really have a mental model for the conference. That's fine there's plenty of time.

Once you've decided the format of the conference you have the most relevant constraints for the venue. Like number of rooms and approximate room size.

The venue is very important, if you find a venue that eases chatting and makes for a charming place that's ideal. Because, you know, these conferences are about the people. Talks are very important of course, but people is the supremum. Let them feel at home, you're hosting the conference for them. Leave room for breaks, we all love having a coffee somewhere and join a group of people.

Equipment: wifi, sockets, projector, audio... Streaming and recording are desirable, but this is a cheap conference (if you decide to do it so), thus it really depends on budget. Something may go not so well here... in our case wifi worked like a charm (instead of sucking which is the normal thing :) Try to get a venue with preinstalled wifi, because ad-hoc wifi installements never work. On the other hand, mics for whatever reason didn't work perfectly. Sometimes that is just out of your control, aka shit happens :).

Date

Next thing is date.

The date of the conference is constrained by

The availability of the venue (that's why venue comes before).
Avoiding clashes with other Ruby/Rails European conferences.
Availability of key speakers, notably Matz.

EuRuKo is traditionally held on weekends.

Talk proposals

In order to receive talk proposals, what we did is set up a blog with SimpleLog at http://euruko2009.org and then post the call for papers there. We asked people to send talk proposals to talks@euruko2009.org, and there were two of us (Jaime and Juanjo) reading this account, answering back to confirm we received it, and writing the proposals on a shared google document, in order received, so the rest of the group could read all of them.

It was a bit of a bottleneck. I think it would be faster and easier for you if you set up the application Fernando built (http://app.euruko2009.org) that you can find at http://github.com/fguillen/euruko_app/tree/master and on the call for papers you tell people that in order to submit a paper, they need to first register on the app, and upload the description there. This way you'll have all of this already stored on the app, and from there you can approve them as you see. Maybe you want to hide this app until all the talks have been approved. Or maybe you prefer to make this public since the first day and set up a voting system so attendees can vote for the talks they'd love to see. We didn't do this, we took an opinionated approach, that is:

Deciding which talks to accept

There will be more talk proposals than you can fit reasonably in 2 days. So you have to decide which ones to choose. What we did for this is using a shared google spreadsheet, one row for each proposal, a column for each member on the organization team, and each one could vote each proposal with a -1, 0 or +1. Then you calculate the sum of all votes, order it and you have the best talks to include.

You can also talk about why some talks will be better than others and try to find a balance, cover different topics, etc., but this simple voting system was very helpful to us. If you talk everything you can get stuck on an eternal debate.

Catering

We gathered information from catering candidates some months before the conference, but we were forced to delay our decission until a couple weeks before, because some sponsorships took too much time to be transferred and we didn't actually know how much money we will be able to collect and considered catering a secondary target.

The most important tip here is: be sure to negotiate precise amounts of food and don't rely on the catering company estimations. We were dissapointed with the Saturday's dinner - the ticketing system worked like a charm though.

Tools we used:

Public blog, simplelog at http://euruko2009.org
Registration app, at http://app.euruko2009.org, code can be found at http://github.com/fguillen/euruko_app/tree/master
Official twitter, at http://twitter.com/euruko
Twitter bot, at http://twitter.com/eurukobot, code can be found at http://github.com/jaimeiniesta/hashtagretweet_bot/tree/master (note: don't query twitter faster than once every 3 minutes or you'll get temporary bans, that happened to us at the beginning). So put a sleep(180) instead. Or what I did is just removing the infinite loop and call it with cron every 3 minutes. I'll pass the code and twitter password to you later, when we've finished our post-conference jobs (announcing videos, invoices, etc.). If you prefer I can just keep the bot on my server running as it is, no problem.
Mailing lists on google groups. A public mailing list and an internal one, just for the organizers.
Google docs for sharing docs and spreadsheets, internal use only.
Invoicing web service, http://facturagem.com to generate, track and send the invoices, internal use only.

Legal stuff

We founded SRUG as a non-profit association. It took some bureaucracy but it was the right move: everybody works like a team, there are no companies or personal interests involved and the money management is crystal clear.

We opened a bank account and two members were authorized to manage it: the association accountant and the assoc. president just in case. Once the money started to come in, the accountant informed periodically about the pending payments, account status and so on. We hired professional assesment to deal with taxes and legal tasks.

The conference tickets were payed through the Paypal gateway, and then we transferred them to the bank account. We left around 300€ in the Paypal account because we suspected that somebody would need a last-time refund if they finally couldn't attend, which was the case.

To gain some agility, some small payments (<300euro) were made by staff members, who asked for invoices at charge of SRUG. Once the invoice was received by the accountant, he transferred them the money back from the bank account. Higher payments were always transfered directly from the bank account. This way every payment has an invoice so they are easily traceable.

The sponsors money was bank transfered and invoices were made for all of them - note that some international transfers took ~10 days.

No attendant invoices were made before the conference as there can be last minute changes. Once the conference was finished, people could ask for invoices in the mailing list or invoices@srug.org. Attendants filled their invoicing data when they registered in the webapp, so it's easy to generate invoices and send them by email.

Expenses

The main expenses were (aprox):

t-shirts: 770€
t-shirt prints: 700€
taxes (there will be another payment later): 150€
Citilab: 3500€
Matz's hotel, flight, etc: 1500€
Paper prints, badges, tickes: 450€
Dinner: 3000€
Catering tickets: 1000€
Hosting, domains: 200€

Of course YMMV.

Provide information about the city where EuRuKo is located in

It can be so useful because maybe people wants to visit something if it's closer enough to visit during a talk which they are not interested in. City maps, where to go, where to eat, what to eat, tube maps, bus lines and timetables, etc.

Thank you all

javier.ramirez.gomara@gmail.com (Javier Ramírez) — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:55:00 GMT

We would like to give a big thank you to everybody attending EuRuKo 2009 for their enthusiasm, to the speakers for the great work they did and to our sponsors for making all of this possible.

If you were taking pictures and you would like to share them, don't forget to tag them in flickr like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/euruko2009/

It was a pleasure to be hosting the conference this year, and we would like to congratulate the fantastic representation of Polish rubyists on the opportunity to hold the event next time (gratulacje!). After meeting them in Barcelona, we are sure EuRuKo 2010 is going to be a big success.

See you all in Kraków!

Party tonight!

jaimeiniesta@gmail.com (Jaime Iniesta) — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:33:00 GMT

Plan for tonight:

After 23:00 some people from EuRuKo will be partying at Ovella Negra [1], and after that, around 02:00 we'll be moving to Razzmatazz [2].

You can get there using the metro, which is open the whole night.

See you there!

[1] Ovella Negra at Google Maps [2] Razzmatazz at Google Maps

We are live!

javier.ramirez.gomara@gmail.com (Javier Ramírez) — Sat, 09 May 2009 10:11:00 GMT

EuRuKo 2009 just opened. You can follow our live streaming at http://www.citilab.eu/streaming-citilab

Enjoy the conference!

Follow the EuRuKo bot!

jaimeiniesta@gmail.com (Jaime Iniesta) — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:42:00 GMT

We've set up a little twitter bot that will be constantly scanning the #euruko hashtag feed and retwitting them, so it's easy for everyone to be up to date on what's been twitted about the EuRuKo conference.

You can find the EuRuKo twitter bot here:

http://twitter.com/euruko_bot

Please remember to include the #euruko hashtag on all your twitts about the conference!

Thanks to the Scotland on Rails team and specially to Mark Conell for sharing this script with us!

Format of Lightning Talks

fxn@hashref.com (Xavier Noria) — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:51:00 GMT

Lightning talks in EuRuKo 2009 will be moderated by the Lightning Talks Master, which will be near the stage with this gong:

Once you've got your laptop connected or whatever and you're ready the LTM beats the gong and you have exactly 5 (five) minutes. No mercy! Squeeze your slides!!!! Run!!!!

LTM has a stopwatch. A gong beat will warn/terrify you at minute 4, and at minute 5 the gong with will signal the end. Next speaker is ready. redo.

Saturday's supper

javier.ramirez.gomara@gmail.com (Javier Ramírez) — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:46:00 GMT

Apart from being our silver sponsor, XING has kindly arranged an informal cocktail supper on Saturday, right after the lighting talks. The buffet will be conveniently served at the building of the venue, with an open terrace available for those who want to enjoy Barcelona's fine weather.

The supper will be a light buffet featuring typical Catalonian products -which by the way are superb- such as the traditional "pa amb tomàquet", ham, cheese, assorted sausages, olives... all of those served with your choice of soft drinks, beer, wine and coffee.

It will be the perfect framework for making small talk and a nice closure for the day.

The organization board would like to thank XING for making this possible. Kudos guys!

Any questions?

jaimeiniesta@gmail.com (Jaime Iniesta) — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:08:00 GMT

EuRuKo 2009 is just around the corner, next Saturday around 250 rubyists will meet on Barcelona!

We want to make this an easy travel experience for everyone so we've compiled a little Help page with FAQs. There you'll find the answers to the questions we've received so far.

So, are all questions answered there? If you've got any more questions, just let us know and we'll try to answer as soon as possible!

A Visual Guide to the Venue for EuRuKo 2009

fxn@hashref.com (Xavier Noria) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:20:00 GMT

Citilab

As you already know the venue for EuRuKo 2009 is Citilab, a center for promoting new technologies located in a wonderful building.

Citilab will provide EuRuKo 2009 with a modern room for 250 people:

Their own staff will also take care of all technical details, projector, sound, wifi, recording, live streaming. We'll have about 60 sockets. They've hosted a lot of important events, like Mozilla Camp Europe 2008 or the FIRST Lego League. It's going to be a superb venue.

How to Get There

Address

Citilab is located in Cornellà de Llobregat, a city very close to Barcelona. The address of the venue is:

Pl. Can Suris, s/n
08940 Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona)
Phone: 93 551 06 60

A taxi from the center of Barcelona may cost around 25/30 euros.

Going by Metro

It is very easy to get to Citilab from Barcelona by metro. Barcelona has several lines, their code include a number and a color:

You have to somehow get the blue line (Line 5, L5) heading towards "Cornellà":

Destination is the last station, which is actually called "Cornellà Centre". That's the leftmost one in this picture:

If you need an estimation, each station takes about 1.5 minutes.

Once you arrive to the destination:

follow the sign that reads "Sortida":

Catalonia has two official languages: Spanish and Catalan. Both of them have strong usage but you'll normally find only Catalan in signs. "Sortida" is Catalan for "Exit".

Go upstairs here:

and at the top take this passage slightly to your right:

Going straight ahead you'll identify this place:

That's a tunnel for a tram, but it goes out in just a few meters. Cross the street to get to the opposite sidewalk, and turn to the left, in the same sidewalk and direction of the person in the picture above. You'll see this:

Now you have two options: Wait for a tram, or have a 8 minutes walk. We'll explain going by foot in this section, and taking the tram in the next section.

Getting to the venue by foot at this point is very easy.

First follow the sidewalk until you get out:

Then just follow the rails of the tram, they'll guide you to the door of the venue. The tram basically goes down a bit:

then performs a right angle towards the right surrounding this mall:

and then goes on in a straight line:

In a moment you'll see the venue to your left:

Going by Tram

In this side of Barcelona, the left side, there are three tram lines, T1, T2, and T3.

Their end in Barcelona city is located at Plaça Francesc Macià. Both lines T1 and T2 have a station exactly in front of Citilab, which is called "Fontsanta I Fatjó". Do NOT take line T3.

If you went by metro following the instructions above, when you cross the rails of the tram in the tunnel and start walking towards the left, there's a tram station right there:

During weekends there's a tram each 10 minutes more or less. You can take the first one because that station belongs only to lines T1 and T2:

The ticket of the metro allows you to take the tram at no additional cost (as long as you take it in the following hour after you left the metro or some rule like that). You need to pass the ticket of the metro to validate it. The second station is "Fontsanta I Fatjó", the one of the venue, you'll recognize the building clearly to your left:

To go back you can take a tram in the opposite direction and then the metro. The same process backwards. But in that case the ticket of the tram does not allow you to take the metro for free.

A T-10 ticket for metro gives you 10 tickets that allow free changes metro -> tram, tram -> metro. You can purchase a T-10 at any metro station, with money or credit card. (Careful, the T-10 sold in tram stations is a different T-10.)