Hi Quentin and others,
Feel free to tag me on Twitter about
NVDACon (Derek, would you like to be copied, too?).
Basically, organizing an event at the scale
of NVDACon (a multi-day international gathering) requires up
to a year of preparation (it took me several weeks to plan the
first one in March 2014; part of the quick planning was due to
my experience organizing online events and chats in the past).
The 2016 edition (NVDA’s tenth anniversary celebration) took
at least six months to organize, and the 2017 edition took a
bit longer; I remember folks taking close to a year to
organize 2018 and 2019 editions.
What makes or breaks an event, more so for
an international meeting, are a combination of vision,
leadership, planning, publicity, the event itself, and
post-event assessment. The organizing committee must
demonstrate commitment to see the event go through by agreeing
on a vision, constant communication, keeping things and
schedule organized, reaching out to potential audience and
speakers (including NV Access), looking for appropriate
venues, date and time selection, triple-checking event agenda
(both the event itself and planning meetings), event conduct,
and willingness to learn from the event and plan ahead. All of
these must be balanced with life priorities, world events,
developments in NVDA and related technologies, availability of
planners and presenters, and other factors (pandemic, for
instance).
One of the most important thing in event
organizing is the role of conference chair. This person is
responsible for listening and articulating the needs of
stakeholders: conference planners, audience members, speakers,
and other attendees (including outside observers). The chair
must be a firm yet receptive visionary, an active listener and
researcher, be able to speak the language of conference
planners, audience members, and outside observers, and
reflexive when it comes to post-event analysis (being
reflective and reflexive are two different concepts). The
conference chair should not press forward with whatever idea
he/she/they have in mind unless other planners say so, and the
chair should not vote down ideas coming from planners without
giving people a chance to think about them. The chair, as a
public face of NVDACon, must be willing to “travel a lot” i.e.
field questions and comments from planners and would-be
attendees before, during, and after the event, and must be
willing to seek feedback.
The ideal planning timeline for a
hypothetical NVDACon in October 2023 might be as follows:
- October
2022: call for organizing committee members, because without
this, NVDA Con simply will not happen.
- November
2022: ideally have the first planning committee meeting,
devoted to analyzing past events and the agenda for the rest
of the planning sessions.
- December
2022: reach out to NV Access about NVDACon 2023.
- January
2023: start formulating conference theme and look into host
venues.
- March 2023:
finalize the conference theme and discuss possible event
dates.
- April 2023:
finalize conference dates, publish the conference theme,
conference dates, and a call for events, set event proposal
deadline to no later than late May.
- May 2023:
host the planning meetings from the actual conference venue.
Keep publicizing call for proposals.
- June 2023:
review proposal submissions, and if needed, ask for
clarifications from submitters.
- July 2023:
devote the meeting to conference scheduling, invite event
presenters to discussing their topic and date/time
preferences.
- August 2023:
coordinate international participation, including
translations, refine conference schedule and publish it no
later than end of August. Start publicity campaign for the
event.
- September
2023: final check-up, ideally with event presenters present,
start running NVDACon ads in broadcast media such as radio
stations for the disability community.
- Three weeks
before the event: do a short run-through with event
presenters to resolve possible technical issues
- Two weeks
before the event: invite NV Access or whoever is going to
deliver the keynote presentation to the meeting.
- One week
before the event: have an informal meeting (I usually called
it “organizers luncheon” so we can discuss many things in an
informal environment).
- Three days
before the event: have audiovisual engineers run the event
to make sure everything is ready.
- Two days
before the event: conference chair should start thinking
about post-event analysis.
- One day
before the event: have an organizers meeting.
- The event
itself
- One week
after the event: organize a meeting for post-event analysis.
The above is the ideal schedule for
organizers. Keep in mind that organizers can speak different
languages and may live in different time zones. This is why I
advise using UTC for NVDACon dates and times (Derek wrote a
handy script to present event times in local time).
The biggest takeaway is that NVDACon cannot
happen by simply asking for it. I, too, hope that it can be
revived – I remember folks having a discussion around event
venue. But before we can revive NVDACon, organizers must be
willing to work together while balancing other priorities.
Cheers,
Joseph
It would be great to bring back.
Unfortunately it's a huge undertaking, and all of us
organizing were tired, and needgburned out. Maybe next year,
if some fresh faces help out on more than a cheers to you
level.
On Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 13:23 Quentin
Christensen <quentin@...>
wrote:
Well, it's not all on one person.
The question is, does the COMMUNITY want NVDACon? If
you are interested in helping out (beyond prompting the
question), it could be worth taking back to the wider
NVDA community to see if there are some fresh faces
interested.
On a side note, someone tagged us
on Twitter asking about NVDACon and to be put in touch
with the organisers. Is anyone interested in fielding
that, or else I could suggest they join here?
I think NVDDA Con is dead. Play Taps. I don't think
Derrek Reemer and company will ever bring it back. I
could be wrong.
On 11/10/2022 1:29 PM, Rowen
Cary wrote:
Hi,
NVDACon is really a meaningful thing, can the
community prepare for the next NVDACon?
Best
--
Quentin
Christensen
Training and Support Manager
