SMWCon Fall 2012 retrospect

Patterns

1. The invitations. I've sent the invitations to all the companies that uses and improves SMW and to all the teams that develop semantic wikis. I have also read the papers about SMW written in the past several years and contacted the authors personally. Many of authors haven't been able to appear at the conference but they've figured out that our event exists.
2. The microphones for the recording. It was good idea to use microphones for the video: the sound quality is very nice (and the sound is everything when you record the conference). However I would recommend to use clip-on microphones (especially for big presentations) instead of hand microphones.
3. The lightning talk format is a really great one! However we need to think more about how to encourage people to make more lightning talks. Markus have also proposed some other formats like lightning discussions about the needed features: that would be nice.
4. Markus have made a time-notification for the presenters, like YOU HAVE 5 MINUTES LEFT. A bit stressful but very effective. Maybe we can use the countdown like the one is used in TED Talks.
5. Encouraging applause: MUST HAVE, it creates great impression.

Antipatterns

1. I know that SMWCon is not a formal event and we don't have any peer-review system, but it would be better to make at least some review. The talk about some topics was really boring and we could have figured this out earlier. Also many talks have _really_ short description and that's pretty bad. Maybe it would be nice to print some kind of book of conference proceedings: that would increase the amount of tangible conference results.
2. The tutorial day wasn't good IMHO. Until the very last time we didn't have the presenters for the tutorials and because of that the wasn't enough time to prepare. The hands-on sessions haven't been planned at all. This must be fixed because the hands-on can be really-really productive.
3. It was not bad idea to make the introductions before each presenter, but Program Char have to be prepared very well:
   1. what the next talk is about
   2. who is the presenter and why we have to be excited to listen to it
   3. how this talk is related to the other talks in the session
4. It would be also nice for Program Chair to tell some kind of conclusion after each talk but only if he can well improvise .
5. the program of the conference have to be done a month before the conference. In SMWConFAll2012 this was not the case: until the last week the conference page looked as a draft of a draft.
6. Some speakers have the wrong understanding of the listeners background: at the conference we have both guys from the wiki world that don't know or care much about Linked Data and we have some Semantic Web guys. The Program Chair have to inform the presenters about the audience.
7. Learn the people's names pronunciations :)

What else is nice to have

1. SMW souvenirs like notepads, coffee mugs. All the guys was happy as kids to have SMW sticker.
2. maybe something related to Wiki of the Month contest, like celebration for the Wiki of the Year.
3. the questionnary/poll for the participants of the tutorial day about their knowledge of SMW. Very-very-very handy thing to have.
4. maybe more broad-audience advertisement on Reddit, Slashdot, Habrahabr, hackernews.
5. slides+video synchronization would be really nice to have
6. I liked 'Ask the speaker button' on the Talks pages. The button allows to ask questions to the speaker before the conference so that he could better adjust his talk to the audience.