[Sketching14] Main recommendations for Sketching 2015 from closing discussion

[Jan Borchers]

Suggestions for improving Sketching for its 10th anniversary

- Jan: reintroduce hands-on workshops
- Phil: further increase diversity => Mike: send recommendations for speakers throughout the year
- Nate: Broadcast & record the talks
- Nate: Include a hack-a-thon (which Mike doesn’t need to organize)
- Nate: Rotation (=> Mike: He deals with rotation by offering signup for alumni for a limited time only)
- More breaks, more change in formats to overcome jetlag
- One-minute-madness introducing yourself at the beginning
- Eric: Reintroduce field trips from years past, helped create deep relationships
- Matt: Give us nametags (echoed by others)
- Rob: Invite locals outside our discipline. Also, loved the field trips
- David C: Offering to host in Sweden, Spain,…
- David C: Open up to larger audience
- Jan: Wouldn’t say the same things with a larger audience, or recorded talks (eg unpublished work)
- Tom: Don’t turn into academic conference
- Tom: Use a backchannel for Q&A
- Tom: Respect economic diversity
- Tom: When will we no longer need Sketching?
- Mike: Year 1 was all about “I got this microcontroller board!” - Sketching isn’t about that anymore.
- Mike: How continue to move centroid of Sketching ahead ahead of obvious questions? We still can’t quite sketch like on paper yet.
- Tom: eTech ended at the right time
- Kate: Start some online discussion before and continue after the event
- Tod: Have a shared document
- Mike: Welcomes suggestions for tools to do that
- Phil: Maybe Sketching is 2 parts - small workshop and larger more public events
- Mike: Dale and he discussed the same idea, Sketching before Maker Faire, but the O’Reilly open model didn’t fit
- Phil: Talk to Dave Schroeder
- Preserve single-track, academic/industry/art mix, it makes Sketching special
- Stefania: Recap of the day, enjoyed Julian’s “tell me the story about…” recap, consider sponsoring some more travel, walkarounds