FrOSCon 2012 - An Organizer View

This years FrOSCon is just over and it was a huge success. Since three years I am a member of the organization team and this year was my first time as a leading team member. Due to this I would like to share some experiences I made during that time.

The FrOSCon organization team is structured into teams, which deal with certain tasks, like the programm, catering, sponsors, kids track, pr, finances, exihibitors, general organization, etc. Over the years we gave this teams more and and more independence, allowing them to decide on their own what they wanted to do and how.
As it turned out, this was the right thing to do. The team members know best how to solve a problem, and by relying on that, we avoid endless discussions in the big round. Even if not always the path was chosen which the majority would have decided on, it never happened that a decision was made which was not acceptable. But most important is, that the team members put much more effort in making their own ideas work than these from others.

The only problem with this approach is, that a conference like FrOSCon is not just a bunch of tasks. A lot of communication between the teams is needed, since tasks overlap and influence each other. Also it is necessary to have a good overview at any given time, so that the results of all teams fit together and no team gets lost. We learned this the hard way last year, where one of our team members just ran out of time to handle his task, but we did not notice.

Thereof we learned not only to make more meetings and ask for more reports, but also to make clear that it is no problem to drop out or decrease the amount put into FrOSCon at any given time without anyone of us getting mad about it. Each member of the organization team is doing FrOSCon just for fun and in its free time, but this is not an excuse for missing deadlines or not doing something right. But if you tell early that there is a problem, other team members can help or take over.

To put it in a nutshell you could say, that to run something like FrOSCon, you need to rely on others, but never blindly. You need to encourage everybody to report problems as early as possible, and at last, you may never loose the fun.