LornaJane

This post is the second in a series of three about organising and hosting events. If you're interested, you could also read the first post about event preparation.

As an organiser you should know exactly where you are going on the day and what you need. Namebadges (sticky labels and pen if nothing else) will be needed at registration, if you have tickets and need to tick people off then rope in lots of volunteers (it sounds like a lot but 3-5% of your total attendee count is ideal) and brief them, and spread out across as much space as you have so you can parallelise as much as possible - registration is always chaos because of course everyone shows up at once and causes a backlog!

I've been to a lot of events, mostly technical, software-related ones, and I've also helped organise a few as well. For people organising events for the first time there are definitely some pitfalls that might not be obvious until you actually, well, until you fall into them! I thought I'd capture my experiences into a series of blog posts, in case they can help any future organisers to avoid some of the traps. First up: what to do before your event starts.

People aren't very good at reading between the lines and doubt could mean they don't buy a ticket for your event. To combat this, put up a website well in advance and make it very easy to find out:

• 
  event location


• event date


• prices of tickets and how to get one


• schedule or structure, basically what to expect and why people should be there


• how to contact you

These are the absolute minimum. My recommendation is that you will also want to include (as early as this information can possibly be available) any extra items such as the dates and times of any social events (so people can include those in their travel plans), travel advice and/or directions, and for bonus points local knowledge such as where to stay, local facilities, etc. One year the PHP London conference did a full set of directions complete with photos - I can't find those now but I loved the idea and did something similar for PHPNW09.

Without this kind of information, people are much less likely to do the work to find it all out themselves, or may not feel confident enough to come along. I've also been bitten by events where the info was sketchy and the event turned out to be just as sketchy! Where the information is easily available, transport links are listed, and contact numbers given, the experience has been much smoother and more pleasant all round - this is especially relevant if you have speakers or attendees travelling internationally who may feel a bit lost when they are trying to make their way to the venue.

Make sure you also pick a hashtag for people to use when they are blogging or tagging tweets or photos, that way your attendees can start to make links with one another (and on a more negative note, you'll see when people are complaining and you can respond!). Already you are building the community that will make your event a success ... and if you've done all of the above then rest assured that you are absolutely on the right lines!

If you have any more tips, share them in the comments, I'm sure there are things I either missed or don't even know I should be doing!

Last month, while in Amsterdam to host the Dutch PHP Conference 2010, I was absolutely stunned (as in, completely speechless - that's pretty rare for me) to have my PHPWomen friends pull me aside and present me with something:



The inscription reads:

Lorna Mitchell
In recognition of your extraordinary efforts
PHPWomen

Although I took the photos of this outside, this item now has pride of place on my mantlepiece, where I can look at it and reflect on what a huge influence the PHPWomen have been, and continue to be, for me and so many others.

I'm halfway delighted and halfway cringing to announce that the phpwomen calendar is now on sale. This was a project organised by my friend and colleague Johanna Cherry, who saw an opportunity at php|tek 2009 to photograph the majority of the core PHPWomen members all in one place and turn it into a fundraising calendar.

If you're expecting something "Calendar Girls" then you'll be disappointed. We are all clothed in the pictures!

I won't share photos from the calendar itself, if you want to see those you can buy your own, but perhaps to give you a hint I'll share an outtake of myself:



I must confess that I was rather agitated when the photos were taken - as a woman in a male-dominated industry, the risk of being seen as just my physical appearance is ever-present, and I normally try hard at unremarkable, unrevealing clothes with very little makeup and a pair of jeans. Hanging out in the lobby at the hotel during a technical conference in that dress and those shoes was significantly more terrifying than delivering three sessions during my first trip to the US as a speaker (which, considering the problems I have with speaking nerves, is saying something). Even after I saw the photos I was kind of unhappy with the whole experience, although I loved the outtake linked above!

Fast forward 6 months and I had dinner with Derick Rethans, who took the photos in the calendar and arranged the printing, and he showed me the prototype he'd had printed. As I sat and turned the pages, I started to understand why this is so important. The women in these photos are some of the leading lights in the community - respected developers, some of them core developers, key community people, and speakers. Yet I saw them as the women they are ... and suddenly remembered that actually, it's acceptable to be both smart AND beautiful.

So - get your calendar and remember all year that beauties can also be geeks! 10% of every purchase goes to PHPWomen, and we will use those funds to support our women and grow more leading lights like these.

A very quick entry today to mention a site that I've been using a LOT lately and I know I will be relying on for large quantities of travelling right through November: Accessible UK Train Timetables. It has up-to-the-minute information, including platform numbers, and you can bookmark queries for the next train between two points along with some other very cool shortcuts.

A site like this, which presents information very cleanly and I can easily use off my phone, is an excellent example of a good use of published data and I'm very grateful to them for this resource which really helps me when I'm out and about!

With increasing numbers of speaking engagements, I've decided that its time to add a dedicated page to this site just to list talks I've given and wil be giving, and link through to slides, blog posts, and perhaps some photos of me speaking (not sure about that last one). So if you're looking for material from a talk I've given - take a look at the talks page, you can find everything there.

I've added all the past talks of note (made much easier by my tendency to blog and tag all these experiences!), let me know if you have any questions or comments!