Judging by the kind comments on twitter and many conversations with people on the day, ORGCon - our first digital rights conference - was a great success. We had about 400 guests including influential MPs and activists from across Europe.
Around 400 people, including influential MPs and activists from across Europe, came together on Saturday to discuss and take action for their rights online.
Judging by conversations on the day and all the kind comments on twitter, ORGCon - our first digital rights conference - was a great success.
Thanks to everyone who came along, particularly the speakers and volunteers who gave their expertise and energy. Special thanks to James Boyle, whose inspirational talk will have drawn many more to get more involved with the movement for copyright reform.
Videos of the presentations will go online this week and will be posted to this blog. We are working to get it all up as soon as possible.
Please do give us your feedback via the comments or events@openrightsgroup.org so that next year's ORGCon will be even bigger and better. In particular, what talks / sessions should we have included? And which cities outside of London could support their own digital rights conference?
Les Pounder:
Jul 26, 2010 at 02:47 PM
Hi there,
I enjoyed the event, but unfortunately the majority of the talks were of such a level that I was unable to understand, nor take part in the discussion.
You state on your website that
"ORGCon is your crash course in digital rights. This one-day conference will deliver everything you need to get campaigning on issues like the Digital Economy Act and the Database State."
I think for next year you should run a session that provides a high level overview of the key points to allow attendees like myself to get more out of the event.
Mili:
Jul 26, 2010 at 02:48 PM
Really enjoyed the event and came away with lots of new ideas. The one suggestion I would have for an improvement is to build in more "networking time". I would have loved to chat to people more but ended up having to rush between sessions a lot. Not sure how you could do that without dropping things from the agenda, and there's literally nothing I would drop - but maybe next year we can have *gasp* a two-day ORGcon. :-)
James Firth:
Jul 26, 2010 at 02:59 PM
I really enjoyed OrgCon, my comments for the next one:
1./ Yes, keep the price low, even if it means we have to pay for our own coffee! But would it be possible to have more coffee outlets?
2./ Start the first talk about 30 minutes after registered conference start, time for introductory coffee and chat
3./ Have Your Shout sessions throughout the conference, had an itching by the afternoon to present one!
Many congratulations on an excellent first conference.
Kevin Beynon:
Jul 26, 2010 at 03:06 PM
I very much enjoyed attending OrgCon on Saturday, but have a few suggestions that would have helped me get more out of it:
- Agendas
I wasn't sure what really came out of a number of the sessions. It would be great to have an initial point to take up and discuss with proposed outcomes.
- Closing Summary
I think the day could have done with a closing session to summaries the day's events and findings and to propose a plan of action for us to take away and act upon.
Well done on the first of, hopefully, many.
K
penwing:
Jul 26, 2010 at 05:04 PM
I really enjoyed ORGCon and am glad I made it. The Feedback I have are focussed around programming:
1) Some abstract of the various events would have wonderful - even if only online and printed on notice boards to save on costs - there were a couple of sessions I went to which weren't quite what I was expecting...
2) This is much more difficult - getting the balance between introductory and non-introductory sessions. I would have loved to have gone to an introductory ACTA session but the first session certainly wasn't that (I don't know about the second). Having said that, all introductory sessions would have driven me insane 8-)
But the main sessions were wonderful achievements and you all deserve a lot of praise for the event overall.
Alex
x x
Helen Lambert:
Jul 27, 2010 at 12:03 PM
I agree with penwing above. It was a great day and I got a huge amount out of it, but I found the programme a little unhelpful where the workshops were just listed as titles, and I would have really appreciated an introductory ACTA session. Everything else was pitched perfectly for my tastes, although I would have loved to have heard Rufus from ODF speak for a full half hour!
Also agree with the person above who suggested more networking time - a longer lunchbreak and 10/15 minutes between each session would have helped, I think, although I can see why it's tricky to know what sessions to cut as a result. That said, with more downtime between sessions, I would have been happy staying an extra hour or two at the end of the day.
Peter Strong:
Jul 27, 2010 at 01:01 PM
Excellent day - I got a lot out of this. One small hiccup is that we lost most of the first ACTA session as this was unexpectedly popular, and had to move to the main hall. Perhaps next year we can register for sessions in advance via the website to give the organisers some idea of numbers to expect for each session. ORG Law was pretty overcrowded too…
Taras Young:
Jul 27, 2010 at 06:52 PM
Timekeeping was a big issue - definitely needed to be fewer sessions, or two days (maybe thematic so you only need to attend one day unless you're super-keen).
The first ACTA talk was hampered by (presumably) all the people who wanted to go to the cancelled e-Voting session migrating to the ACTA one.
James Boyle was excellent, I haven't seen such an intelligent and eloquent speaker for a long time.
Agree with the point about networking time, I'd like to have met a few more people in person that I only know online.
Mic people needed to go all the way to the back of the hall when getting audience questions/comments instead of hanging around the front.
All in all though, a great effort for a first conference, I'm sure the creases will get ironed out in years to come!
Charlie:
Jul 27, 2010 at 11:01 PM
Yep, well organised, well facilitated, well priced. Lots of important issues covered.
I personally get on better with smaller, more face-to-facey sessions and felt like there could have been more like that.
The gender balance on panels was pretty bad, esp given that the makeup of the audience was much closer to wider society than most tech-related events.
Might have been good to have more detail on the sessions online or on the printed programme.
Overall a useful day.
I've posted video of the Open BBC session at:
http://charlieharvey.org.uk/dbpage.pl?id=71
Michael Holloway:
Jul 28, 2010 at 10:09 AM
Thanks everyone, that's useful, here's a summary
* High level overview just as important as in-depth detail
* More networking time
* More coffee
* More 'Your Shout' sessions
* Distribute agenda / abstracts for each session in advance and as part of programme
* Closing summation session
* Better timekeeping from chairs
* Contingency plans for oversubscribed sessions
* Improve gender balance on panels
* More small sessions
* Two days?
Anything else to add?
And anyone want to join the organising committee for future events?
Mo:
Jul 28, 2010 at 12:08 PM
I think most of the key stuff's been covered above, but my tuppence...
More time for lunch/networking is killer. Definitely necessary. Similarly, more coffee.
Two days would definitely be good (it was a lot to cram into a single day), but some people will only be able to come for one of the two days.
45 minutes goes *really* fast on some of the bigger subjects. There's loads of stuff I would have liked to have talked about in the BBC session and there wasn't time to go near (although whether anybody would want to listen is another matter!), and I could've sat in the Music Reformists session for easily another 45 minutes. It's no surprise most things were running late by the end of it!
The session format didn't necessarily play to the panel's strengths in some cases. I think in some of them, people were really coming along to find out more about a subject, rather than to throw ideas around, and so the introductory spiel with the remainder as Q&A didn't necessarily work brilliantly - perhaps a more formalised agenda for some of the sessions would help?
Overall, though, I had a great day, and everybody else I've spoken to did too. Thanks for having me!
Jim:
Jul 29, 2010 at 10:09 AM
Couple of things. I think probably the timekeeping issues was related to the number of speakers per panel. On my panel, for example, the plan was that each of the four speakers would talk for five minutes and then we'd open it up to the audience. Ir proved impossible to keep them to that, and so discussion was very short.
Probably it would be good to have a couple of genuine tutorials that people can go to for basic background.
I think the conference would be more lively if at least a few panels included people ORG doesn't agree with (a la www.cfp.org).
Get me to proofread all official handouts.
wg