Helping shy people get involved

[davidmason]

@garrows pointed out in a separate issue that there are some limitations to collaboration for people who are shy about large crowds and new people. For example, standing up with a mic and introducing a project is very daunting for some, and trying to track down the writer of a project card by asking around may be equally intimidating.

I think it is worth giving some specific thought to this area to help more people have even more amazing experiences.

[davidmason]

For introducing projects and helping people get connected, we could have a few volunteers go through the tables on Friday night asking people about their projects. These volunteers would be tasked with finding attendees who have a project they would like to collaborate on, but are not comfortable to get up with a microphone in front of everyone. They would find out what level of exposure the attendees are comfortable with, which might range from just mentioning the project and keeping them anonymous, to standing with them to provide moral support while they present - whatever support they need to feel comfortable enough to get their projects some exposure.

The volunteers would then be the official contact points for people who want to work on those projects, and could handle introductions and try to provide any other support to help people get collaborating.

[timoxley]

Good ideas @davidmason. Along similar lines @domenic has suggested we run a more "mixer" events to break down the cliques more. I agree with all of this and would be happy for it to happen but I need someone to champion organising it.

[davidmason]

@timoxley I'm happy to put my hand up to coordinate some collaboration facilitation on the Friday afternoon/evening.

Do we have a rough idea of attendance numbers/capacity for the next camp? I'll need to get several others to help out, and this would really benefit from volunteers not being spread too thin.

[timoxley]

I think the camp can accommodate 150

[davidmason]

I think we'll want at least 5-10 volunteers to be able to get around to everyone in a reasonable time then. It is difficult to estimate because it will depend what proportion of people want help presenting something - that will be some useful data to collect during the next camp to inform campjs V.

[davidmason]

Please use campjs/campjs-iv#1 for further discussion of this issue :)