Organising a successful event: the CW11
Posted on 11 January 2011
Organising a successful event: the CW11
Events are like dentists. Everyone thinks they're a good idea, but people aren’t always that keen to attend. This year, I'm organising an event called the Collaborations Workshop (known, to its friends, as the CW). It’s certainly an easy event to organise, because the feedback from previous years has been very good. My problem is: how do I maintain this success and hopefully make it bigger and better than previous years?
Before we go any further, let’s get something straight: I have no problem… liberating… any ideas that people reading this post might have about organising successful events. If you’ve got an idea, let me know at info@software.ac.uk. And I also want to plug the event: it’s on 3-4 March, is based in Edinburgh and more details can be found on the conference website.
Like anyone that’s spent any time in academia, I’ve been to my fair share of conferences and sat through a lot of Powerpoint (Powerpoint derived from the latin Pooworpont meaning ‘to stare fixedly’). That’s why we run the CW with a flexible agenda. Before and during the event, people suggest topics for discussion, and these ideas are voted on by everyone at the workshop. We then split into small groups and discuss the most popular topics. I feel that this is the main strength of the workshop, because only the topics that interest everyone get air time, and if a topic runs out of steam, we simply move on to something else. Most importantly, the workshop’s all discussion based, so no one has to sit through death by Powerpoint.
How do we make the workshop better? In previous years, people have asked for more time to discuss their work and meet with collaborators in smaller groups. This year, we’re kicking off with a series of lightening talks presented by any of the attendees. That’s three minutes to discuss the your research, topic or project's needs. Following the talks, you can meet up with anyone that’s interested in your work and discuss collaboration. I’ll even get you sitting together during the conference dinner (if you let me know in advance).
We’re also focussing on funders this year. I’m very keen to get funders from all the research councils and the private sector to attend. This way, the funders get to know more about the researchers they are working with and the researchers get to know more about what funding is available for their new collaboration.
I’m looking forward to the workshop, testing out our new ideas and – hopefully – seeing the start of some exciting new collaborations.