Contribute by Participating

It doesn't cost money to attend the BarCamp flavor of "un-conference". If we had to choose between your money and your active participation, we'd choose the latter (happily, that's not an either/or-type of choice in most cases). To attend BarCamp is to participate -- so ask yourself what form(s) of participation will be the manner of your contribution(s).

Contribute by leading a session:


If you would be comfortable leading one or more sessions, please click the "Proposed Sessions" tab, above, and create a page for your idea(s).

Contribute by co-leading a session, or by helping with preparation for or presentation of a session:


Find a proposed session and contact the participant who has offered to lead it, and offer your services.

Contribute by planning and preparing:


Subscribe to the BarCampMilwaukee Yahoo! Group, and participate in the conversation. Attend planning and preparation sessions.

Contribute by helping during BarCamp, as a Counselor or as a Helpful Camper:


Counselors and Helpful Campers are self-identified. If you expect to perform one of these functions, there will be material here on the BarCampMilwaukee site for you to read in preparation, and places for you to sign up and make suggestions.

Counselors --


  • If one or more of these applies to you:
    • If you've attended one or more other BarCamps,
    • If you've been involved in the planning and preparing for this event,
    • If you're just a natural organizer and leader,
  • And you are planning to attend a good-sized chunk of the BarCamp event and aren't reluctant to lead,
  • Then you might be a good counselor.

Helpful Campers:


  • If you want to make yourself useful when you get to BarCamp,
  • Then you might be a Helpful Camper.

From Justin's suggestions in the discussion thread, to be refactored into this page:

Counselors: a number of leadership roles, each one manages about 5 people

-when people arrive they sign up for a role

-each leadership role manages a group for about 2 hours - all changes and substitutions go through said leaders. leaders are responsible to fill roles, either from a general pool or people standing around.

-we should also break the time into "general registration" and "registration required entry." at the place we will be at, during the weee hours security will require that you are on a qualified list to let you into the building. we can set these hours, but i think we have to pay for those general hours, james needs to find out more details from Tracy. I recommend that we set open hours to be from 10am-5pm on saturday and sunday.

- "general registration" hours will require a lot more help and cultural structure, we need to make sure people register and that people know how barcamp works, we will also have to let them know how to get clued into the culture and where to find out about sessions, we also need to sign them up for at least one "general registration task" which may be between 15min-1hr worth of work depending on how many we expect to attend.

-"registration required entry" hours will only be for those who have registered on the website, and or earlier in the day. During these hours i expect the number of people to drop off, and we should all start to get a feel for who is going to be there. during these hours i would expect us to drop some of the chore positions, but we will still need "leadership" positions to handle assorted areas like security, doors, etc...

So categories of tasks and roles will vary by time of day and type of activities going on.

More to come -- anybody who is interested is welcome to edit the above for content or formatting, or to add more material here.

Let Chaos Reign

raster's picture
On September 13th, 2007 raster says:

As mentioned, I will head up the Chaos Committee... Our main goal is to allow things to happen at the precise moment they need to. (And apply a gentle nudge if needed.)