| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

hosting a regional event FAQ

This version was saved 13 years, 7 months ago View current version     Page history
Saved by Jason Powell
on August 24, 2010 at 12:32:41 pm
 

So you want to host a regional CITRT style event eh? :-)

 

This doc will serve as a helpful guide for those wanting to host their own regional/local CITRT event.  Nothing is written in stone, but here are things we've done in the past that have worked well.

 

Schedule

The event itself looks something like this:

Evening before - optional meet-n-greet dinner (xbox/wii gaming?)

Day of - 8:30 registration.  9:00 roundtable session.  Noon - lunch provided. 1:00 roundtable session.  4:00 closing/evaluation.  5:00 roundtable ends.  6:00 optional dinner.

 

Costs

Make it as cheap as possible, but cover all your expenses (food, room, mailers, photocopies, snacks, etc)...try to engage local vendors to offset costs (especially vendors not familiar with CITRT)

 

Promotion

CITRT leadership will promote from our venues (twitter, facebook, personal blogs, citrt.org postings, citrt.org subdomain and wiki page if needed (see GCC's example), etc), but you'll need to find ways to reach IT peeps in your area not familiar with CITRT.  Mailers, personal phone calls, whatever you can do to reach out .. do it!

 

Registration

  • Online registration works best ... hey, we're all geeks right? :-)
  • Set a fair price, cover your costs but don't make it so cheap that its not a "value" that people commit to.  We've found $35 works great for a 1 day event.
  • If meals are to be included note that on the registration page and be sure to allow attendees to note any special dietary needs.

 

The Day

Opening

  • Welcome
  • Prayer at some point before discussion starts, A challenge or devotion time lead by a local leader who "gets church IT people" and has a passion for the church is a great start to the day.
  • Go over RT Guidelines with the group .. download a copy of the Guidelines
    • REMEMBER - key is that nothing is written in stone ... be flexible and have fun!
    • Vendor participation? 
      • We encourage vendors to particapate in the discussions, but NO SALES PITCH!  This is worth repeating more than once!  To help with this you could give each vendor a 10min? timeslot during lunch to pitch to everyone while they eat ... especially if they helped cover your costs.
      • We all can recognize a pitch, the host isn't the only person who can simply say 'i think this information should be provided at a break'
  • Collecting discussion topics ... several options you could try ... FWIW, here's a huge list of past topics to jumpstart thinking
    • Capture topics/questions before the event via online survey ... project them so everyone can see list
    • Capture topics/questions on the fly .. spend 10mins max writing down topics/questions from the audience on a whitebord or whatever so everyone can view.
  • Identify atleast one person to take notes, most people get caught up in the converstation and then later ask for links or names of tools or products, it has proven very helpful for one person (or people rotating) to take notes and publish those notes for the entire group to go back to later.

The Moderator's Job

  • Start working through each question/topic.  Feel free to merge questions together, address questions out of order when there's a natural segway ... again nothing's written in stone.  Let the discussion be organic vs. mechanical.
  • It's the moderators job to discern which questions are most beneficial for the whole group and which would be best answered by "experts" during a break.  For very narrow specific questions ask the audience who has been there, done that and have them pair up with the requestor during a break ... unless many people are interested in answer too.
  • Try to not let any one topic take up too much time.  Some topics like storage/backups/DR could take all day :-)  The moderator will have to from time to time ask that the group move on to another topic.
  • Stress that people be on time after breaks ... you'll have to be persistent on this as geeks tend to like to yak a lot with each other :-)

Closing

  • Take a group and individual photos!  We're trying to create a CITRT database and the more info we can collect the better.  Putting a name with a face is helpful down the road :-)
  • Push people to connect with other CITRT peeps on twitter/facebook/IRC chatroom/podcast/etc. 
  • Fill out the Church IT Survey

Door Prizes

  • Everyone loves a freebie even if its just some silly swag donated by a vendor.

 

Post Event

Email everyone and thank them for attending ... again promote CITRT.org and encourage them to connect with other peeps online.

Send CITRT leaders a copy of your registration and pictures ... we'll add it to the database.

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.