OSCTC logistics

• Before Event
  • Finding hosts
    • May not be necessary. (You may be the host yourself!)
    • For OSCTC events, we look for:
      • Campuses with enough students to attend the event (usually 2000+) or willing to invite off-campus students.
      • Campuses either easily accessible to us or with funding to transport us to them.
      • Womens' colleges or schools with a strong Women in CS/Tech/STEM presence.
      • At least one (ideally two or three) contacts that seem enthusiastic and reliable.
  • Date/schedule
    • We usually run our events as a one-day workshop on a Saturday or Sunday, however it should be possible to split between two weekend evenings or to expand across two weekend days. Our default schedule is here.
    • Things to check when picking a date:
      • School calendar, if at a school. Watch out for school vacations, spring break, midterms, final exams.
      • General holidays and three day weekends. We accidentally scheduled an event once for a three day weekend and it was very sad.
      • Season: publicity/attendance can be very hard during the summer and holiday seasons, both because students are off campus and because contacts such as mailing list admins and organization leaders/outreach officers may be on vacation. (We seem to get 75% response from mailing list admins during the school year and 0-10% response during the summer.)
  • Space
    • You can use this checklist to help you pick a space, and then to check out the space leading up to the event.
  • Funding
  • Food
    • Because our events start early and run a full day, we like to provide breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. This usually costs between $200-350, depending on the size of the event. Less, if we order pizza for lunch. Your needs may vary, but we like to get:
      • Breakfast: 1-3 boxes of coffee + milk + sugar, donuts/bagels/pastries, fresh fruit
      • Lunch: If possible, order sandwiches and salads rather than pizza. Try to provide vegetarian/vegan/dairy/gluten free options even if no attendees have listed it.
      • Snack: Something light (people generally aren't that hungry or are willing to eat lunch leftovers) but fruit and chocolate never hurt anyone.
  • Staff
    • We recommend finding staff as early as possible (as soon as you pick a date). We try to achieve a 4:1 or 5:1 staff to attendee ratio. This is particularly important during the afternoon workshop, and we often have staff who only come in the afternoon.
    • There is a template email we use when recruiting new staff.
    • Try to find:
      • People for the career panel. We usually have 3-4 people on the panel.
      • People to present tutorials/lead demos/lead career panel. Can be up to 5-6 separate people, but frequently organizers will present several parts of the day.
      • What we call a "software whisperer" - at least one person who is extremely familiar with setting up development environments and working with open source software, who will be able to handle most technical problems that come up.
  • Publicity
    • Step 1: Save the date email - if there are groups you are especially hoping to reach, it's worth sending a brief "save the date/time" email as soon as you've picked a date.
    • Step 2: Create publicity website
      • Instructions for making sites like ours are here.
    • Step 3: General Purpose Publicity
      • Once the site is made, and ideally in the time frame of 4-2 weeks before the event, we do our main publicity push. We try to reach out to:
        • The computer science department, computing clubs, ACMs, especially any diversity-focused groups such as Women In Computing groups. When doing so, we use this email template.
        • Individual science departments and clubs. When doing so, we use this email template.
        • If our hosts have given us permission, we will also reach out to students from other local colleges. When doing so, we prioritize women's colleges and community colleges, usually by emailing them a day earlier than others.
  • Communicating with attendees
    • See email templates
• During Event
  • ?
• After Event
  • Blog post
  • Follow up emails
    • See email templates
  • Event ideas