At our wonderfully well-attended and interesting CiviDay Bristol (here and here), somehow I managed to become co-opted as the chief co-ordinator for CiviCON London 2016 - 6th-7th October - and I'm reliably informed that organising for this event starts now, or earlier even.
The first thing for me to to do is to find out all the stuff I don't know, things like like who is going to help me, what resources exist from previous conferences and what the budgets are likely to be. Michael's budget summary for Colorado 2015 is particularly interesting https://civicrm.org/blogs/michael-mcandrew/civicon-denver-2015-financials but would be much more useful if the exchange rates weren't so volatile!
I'll also be drawing on the success of 2015 by grilling last years organiser, Mr Gibson, for lessons learned and essential elements of the build-up. We're hosting our first Google hangout before the end of March, so if you're interested in getting involved, let me know and I'll drop you an invite.
As co-ordinator I'm initially interested in recruiting for a team to market the conference and also some people to take responsibility for the sponsorship, session planning and speaker recruitment. I know we have people with great expertise in these areas from previous events, and it would be wonderful to have some of you on board, or at least to be able to tap into your experience if anybody else wants to give it a go.
If you have any good advice for me, or any advice at all for that matter, please comment below.
Comments
Heh @seank, thanks for stepping up, or, well, not escaping the draft efforts. ;)
I'm on the Sponsorship team for CiviCon Colorado again this year, and we'd be interested in coordinating with anyone on your side. We've set up a new Global Sponsorship program for CiviCons this year, and we're interested in working collaboratively with CiviCon UK and CiviCon NE Europe on outreach and marketing for the events. Ping me.