BARCAMP
A BarCamp describes an open meeting with open workshops where the content and procedure is determined by the participants at the beginning of the meeting and is shaped as the event continues.
Procedure:
The procedure can be summarised in the following steps: welcome, introduction round, session planning, sessions and final round. In the welcome stage, the organisers are introduced and the barcamp rules are explained. For the welcome and organisation, a moderator should be chosen in advance to lead everyone through the day and coordinate the session planning. An introduction round follows where the participants introduce themselves with two or three sentences. In the session planning stage, all participants offering a session present their topic to the group in a few sentences. If people are interested, the topic is incorporated into the session planning. A schedule including room information should be prepared beforehand and placed on a pinboard. The sessions are pinned onto this. The pinboard then serves as a daily programme. 1 hour should be scheduled for each session: 45 minutes for the topic, 15 minutes for participants to move from one session room to another. After the session planning, the participants meet in the individual session rooms. The content of the session should be recorded (e.g. via Twitter, word document, flipchart). The session topics and the content worked on serve to provide needs analysis for trends and topic needs and can be incorporated into the planning of further events. In the final round, all participants come together again to form a plenum. Photos, tweets and impressions of the day should be collected and presented in the final round. The final round also gives the opportunity to provide feedback on the organisation and the topics.
Ideal group size: 50-150 people
Duration: 1-2 days depending on group size and topics
Meeting room, plus several break-out rooms/group rooms or seminar rooms
Materials: Moderator’s toolbox, several flipcharts, pinboards, pens
Advantages:
- Topics are not pre-defined, but arise on the spot
- Everyone can participate and introduce topics
- Very interactive groups, high exchange of experience
- New perspectives and creative approaches arise
- Many small sessions at the same time on several topics