Takeaways from OpenRefine's First Hybrid Barcamp
Earlier this year, inspired by ongoing conversations within the OpenRefine community, we decided to organize our first-ever hybrid Barcamp. This idea emerged from discussions about enhancing community engagement and collaboration. Our goal was to create a space where contributors could gather, share insights, and work together to improve OpenRefine. We decided to go with a barcamp format so attendees could set the agenda and discuss important topics for the community.
The Barcamp took place from June 16 to June 19, both online and in Berlin. There were 14 in-person participants and 15 remote attendees.
Here are the main takeaways and highlights from our event with a link to the summary of each session on our forum for you to continue the conversation.
![hand drawn poster for open refine barcamp](/img/2024barcamp/1719406845020.jpeg)
Before the event
We invited participants to suggest sessions using the Barcamp Session Proposal page. Other participants were able to comment on each session. At this stage, the goal was to socialize the topic of discussion rather than make the planning itself.
Monday
![barcamp attendees seated at table](/img/2024barcamp/1719406847962.jpeg)
![barcamp attendees seated at table](/img/2024barcamp/1719406850668.jpeg)
As it was our first BarCamp, we were still determining how much content we would have to accommodate a two-day-and-a-half conference. We initially set up Monday as a travel day with an optional session. Setting the morning as travel time worked well for those coming from North America and other European countries.
Monday morning was a travel day for participants. Later in the morning and afternoon, a small group of contributors arrived early at the event space to prepare the room (including adding signage for participants to find the room), set up, and test the audio and video materials.
We used the rest of the afternoon to get to know each other and discuss the next two days' agenda. It is important to note that most of the contributors present only interacted via the mailing list, forum, or GitHub. For the majority, it was their first live interaction.
Each person who proposed a session had 5 to 10 min to present it and other participants to ask questions to clarify and help refine the scope. This format gave us a sense of the community's interest and helped us determine how long we should set aside for each topic. One of the challenges at this stage was staying on track to only scope the session rather than discuss the topic. During the break, we invited online and in-person participants to vote and/or comment on the Barcamp platform.
After the session, we aggregated the votes in Google Documents. We then started discussing the scheduling of each session and identifying who would be the facilitator, the note-taker, and the stream-sitter. During the scheduling, we considered the time difference with North America and scheduled the most anticipated session to ensure maximum participants could attend.
Setting plenty of time for this exercise was a good point of the BarCamp. We were not stressed about the planning and had time to get to know each other and remove ambiguity around the proposition. Once the calendar was set up, a small group of volunteers updated the BarCamp website with the different sessions along with the Google Calendar so remote participants could see the schedule in their timezone.
For the next time, we should set a clearer event start time guideline. Because we set up the afternoon as optional, some participants had scheduling conflicts, and we did not have a full room.
At the end of the day, the group in Berlin went to a biergarten as a social activity.
![barcamp attendees socializing and smiling](/img/2024barcamp/photo_2024-07-10_11-03-08.jpg)