Registration for InfoCamp Seattle 2010 will be open until 411 people have registered, or until 5:00 pm (PST) on Thursday, September 30 — whichever is first.*

Our ticketing page on Eventbrite will show how many tickets are left.

Though 411 is the max, we’ll be happy if anywhere from 200 to 400 people show up. A huge event is not the goal. The real goal is to bring together a diverse group that creates a fun, vibrant weekend of unconference interactions! Two of last year’s participants said it best:

“Just like last year, I loved the variety of information professionals who attended. The resulting cross-hybridization of knowledge is amazing, unparalleled, and incredibly important in the information field.”

“InfoCamp is the only conference I know of (nation-wide!) that captures the full spectrum of “information science.” Where else can I go to sessions on library catalogs, mobile technologies, copyright, and UX all in one day? Please keep encouraging people from all walks of Info-life to participate!”

Hope you’ll join us at InfoCamp Seattle 2010! Head to Eventbrite for more details and to reserve your seat!

* Why 5pm on Thursday? For a couple of really tedious logistical reasons.

At InfoCamp Seattle 2009, Rachel and Aaron (two of InfoCamp’s founders) led a session about starting your own InfoCamp, and we promised a Starter Kit in a follow-up blog post.

Seattle, Berlin, and Berkeley have all hosted InfoCamps… be a part of the global movement by starting an InfoCamp in your area!

Venue amenities

On our tours of the building, we appreciated the auditorium that seats about 400 people, the variety of high-tech classroom options for breakout sessions (see below), the gorgeous, light-filled atrium, the art, and the interesting smaller spaces for hanging out and chatting. The space around the building impressed us too – with a beautiful green space, fountain, and reflecting pool right outside the doors.

Two of the classrooms for InfoCamp breakout sessions

Not only do we love the feel of the building, but it meets our criteria, developed over the past three years, for a good InfoCamp venue:

• Big enough for 300-400 participants, with an auditorium & breakout rooms
• Located in Seattle
• Parking and/or public transportation options
• Wireless internet access
• Non-stuffy atmosphere
• Affordable – so ticket prices can be low

View of the hotel from an InfoCamp breakout room

A bonus for out-of-town participants — InfoCamp will be one block away from a hotel!

The Silver Cloud Hotel on Broadway is the same hotel we worked with last year. We’ve set up a block of discounted rooms there – get the details here.

Selecting the venue

During the selection process, we reviewed comments from last year’s post-InfoCamp survey. Of the 16 comments about last year’s venue (Cleveland High School), 12 were positive, 2 were positive but suggested we consider venues closer to downtown Seattle, and 2 requested a more central location.

One participant suggested, “It would be easier to have a ‘greener’ conference if you held it within downtown Seattle. I drove a bunch from hotel to conference and back again. I’d much prefer to walk more.”

A “greener” unconference is a great goal, and since InfoCamp’s low budget rules out the expensive downtown venues, we’ve done our best to find an affordable “green” venue — in fact, Seattle U was recently featured in The Seattle Times for its sustainable practices. We also prefer to avoid the typical corporate hotel & convention center locations, because their atmosphere tends to lack the friendly, community-oriented character that InfoCamp tries to cultivate. We look for venues run by nonprofits, schools, and community organizations, and we’re happy to have found one so close to downtown, next to lodging, and in one of the most walkable neighborhoods in Seattle!

We look forward to holding InfoCamp Seattle 2010 in Seattle University’s Pigott Building and hope it works well for everyone who wants to attend. More details about buses, parking, etc., will be on the wiki soon. Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions about the venue.

View more photos of the venue, learn more on the InfoCamp wiki, or register now!

InfoCamp Seattle 2010
October 2 and 3
at Seattle University

As always, InfoCamp will feature fantastic speakers, rich discussions, and an agenda that you help create. And, of course, plenty of coffee!

This year, the venue is just steps away from transit, lodging, and some of the city’s best restaurants and bars. We’ll convene in the Pigott Building on Seattle University’s campus in the exciting Capitol Hill/First Hill area, only a mile from downtown.

Since we’ve reserved a great venue already, we’re opening registration now! To secure your spot at InfoCamp Seattle 2010, visit infocampseattle2010.eventbrite.com.

For more information, check out the event web site or wiki.

See you in October!

Want to be considered? Send a link to your portfolio to info@infocamp.org by Monday, March 22, 2010.

With a bunch of user experience professionals on the 2010 planning team, we are strong on the UX deliverables and presentation code — user flows, site maps, wireframes, HTML/CSS, Javascript, etc. And we’ve found a volunteer designer to create a new logo for InfoCamp. But we need help putting it all together, and we’d love to have someone from the InfoCamp community contribute.

From the emails we receive at info@infocamp.org, we’ll select a few potential volunteers to chat with and decide who ultimately gets to take our UX deliverables and make them pretty. We’ll be forever grateful to all who offer!

Email us a link to your portfolio by Monday, March 22, 2010 if you’re interested. Thanks!

InfoCamp was founded in Seattle in 2007, and it has run annually in Seattle since. In 2008, Berlin, Germany hosted an InfoCamp. In late 2009, Heather Ford at UC Berkeley contacted us, and she & friends began planning an InfoCamp. And now, it’s here – InfoCamp Berkeley 2010 is today!

It’s been awesome working with the Berkeley organizing committee. Congratulations on starting a new InfoCamp! And to all participants: have a ton of fun! Wish you could be there? Follow along on twitter or read notes from the sessions on the wiki!

Now, on to other cities… NYC, Boise, Portland, your city? We here in Seattle are hard at work on an InfoCamp Starter Kit, and will announce it widely when it’s ready, which will be soon. Want to run an InfoCamp in a new city? Simply read the Starter Kit (when available) and get in touch with us at info@infocamp.org!

We would love to see InfoCamps in other cities, and we plan to support efforts to host InfoCamps elsewhere. (There’s already been an InfoCamp in Berlin!)

Aaron and Rachel led a session at InfoCamp Seattle 2009 about starting your own InfoCamp, and we plan to follow that up with an “InfoCamp Starter Kit.” The kit will include things like best practices, checklists, videos, artwork, resources, etc.

One of the resources in the starter kit will be this article from the ASIS&T Bulletin – it describes the origins of InfoCamp and gives a few tips for running one.

As we do this in our spare time on a volunteer basis, we can’t guarantee when we’ll be done with the starter kit – but rest assured, we’re working on it!

In the meantime, while we put our materials together, potential InfoCamp organizers can do three things:

1. Start looking for ways to plug into local professional organizations, because those are the places to find like-minded people. Start thinking about building a crack team of InfoCamp organizers. We suggest at minimum four people, with five as a best practice. Consider the skills and personalities you want to put together into a dream team. Don’t be afraid to approach people in your community – that’s how InfoCamp got started in Seattle!
2. Think about where your seed money is going to come from. We will provide example sponsorship documents in the kit. But for now, think about who you might approach, or what budget you might have access to through a professional, community, or academic organization. You’ll probably need a down payment on a venue to get the ball rolling.
3. Begin what might be a fairly long search for a venue. You’ll need a big auditorium space, a meal space with a staging area for catering, and at least five breakout rooms. Don’t forget to scope out space for a registration desk, coffee and snacks, and sponsor tables. See our blog post about how we chose Cleveland High School for inspiration. Remember: humans take cues about how to act from their surroundings. Therefore, the more humble and laid-back the atmosphere, the better. Skip hotels or fancy conference centers. Get creative and think schools, community centers, etc.

If you have ideas about what you would like to see in an InfoCamp Starter Kit, email info@infocamp.org or comment here and let us know!

• 350 people registered
• 297 people attended & participated
• At least 11 degrees from 6 schools were represented among the 94 students in attendance
• 95 more people attended in 2009 than in 2008
• 202 more people attended in 2009 than in 2007
• 51 breakout sessions were proposed during the event and led by participants
• Up to 9 breakout sessions ran simultaneously
• 2 invited speakers took to the Snowy Owl stage
• 395,000 cups of coffee were drunk*
• 2 InfoParties took over Georgetown
• Hundreds of photos were taken
• 1 view of Mt. Rainier was appreciated
• 80 posters decorated the venue (and the city)
• 10 routers provided wireless
• 11 un-awards were given out, with help from a trebuchet and the gathered participants
• 107 post-event surveys were taken (future blog posts will summarize some of the comments). Thanks to the respondents!

* Ok, it might have been fewer cups of coffee than that.

The next blog post will be about starting your own InfoCamp…

Thanks to everyone – participants, session leaders, volunteers, sponsors, invited speakers, and advisory board – who made InfoCamp awesome!

Coming soon: another blog post with more wrap-up info. And later, we’ll publish an article on how to start your own InfoCamp in a different city!

Getting to InfoCamp

InfoCamp Seattle 2009 starts at 9am on Saturday, October 10, at the Cleveland High School building: 5511 15th Ave S, 98108.

Check out the InfoCamp wiki for transportation information, including a video about getting to InfoCamp, bus suggestions, biking & driving directions, and a ridesharing board.

Drivers can park for free in the parking lot or along the street (15th Avenue).

What to bring

Please bring a personal water bottle and/or travel mug. We’re skipping the all-too-common plastic water bottle to save money and a bit of the planet. It’s a school, so there are those classic water fountains. We’ll also have coolers of water, other beverages, and of course coffee flows freely all day.

You might also want to bring business cards, a camera, a laptop, and your idea for a session. And if you’re going to give that session, don’t forget your images, handouts, notes, or slide deck. We’re bringing all the dongles and cables we have, but if you want to present with a computer, bring what you have, too.

A sketch of the weekend

InfoCamp entrance seen from parking lot

Closer view of InfoCamp entrance

When you arrive, head to the InfoCamp entrance (see photos) to check in and get your swag at the registration desk.

The registration desk should be open all weekend; you can check in whenever you arrive. But it won’t be as much fun without you, so do try to show up for the whole thing!

Grab some coffee and a light breakfast, then check out the schedule on the wall — you can sign up if you want to lead a session! (More on this just-in-time, crowd-sourced scheduling process in another blog post.)

Then, join us at 9:30 in the auditorium for a welcome session. Axel Roesler will go on at 10am, and then we’ll launch into sessions led by you! A taco bar lunch will be served, then more sessions, and then we’ll head to the InfoParty around 5pm.

On Sunday, we’ll have another welcome session at 9:30, and Vanessa Fox will speak at 10. Then, sessions, sandwiches and salads for lunch, more sessions, and at the end of the day we’ll have “five minute madness” and hand out prizes and awards.

Rooms

Two of the breakout rooms

Seven classrooms and the auditorium will serve as the breakout session rooms. If you want to lead a session, check out the rooms before you sign up, and choose one that meets your needs.

All rooms will have a big surface to write on, such as a white board, chalkboard, or big Post-It notes. Other than that, each room will have different equipment and furniture (not all will have computers and projectors).

Most of the rooms should have internet access, which may be partially filtered due to CIPA. We’re working closely with the school district on internet access and filtering issues.

Each room will have an assigned volunteer, so look for your room’s volunteer if you need help with the room.

Enjoy InfoCamp!

Remember, this is not a regular conference – it’s an unconference. InfoCamp is what the community makes of it. And we hope that the community makes it awesome!

If you have suggestions, ideas, or questions, let us know via email (info@infocamp.info), the wiki, a blog comment, or by talking to us this weekend!

Your InfoCamp Seattle 2009 organizers,
Aaron, Andy, Joshua, Kathryn, Kris, Kristen, Matt, Michelle, and Rachel