Darius and I paid close attention to the criticisms we received about GameLoop 2009.  So we have a few improvments we’re making to the format.  A big thank-you to everyone that took the time to tell us what they didn’t like about things!

The majority of the feedback boiled down to the format not promoting a deep-dive on interesting topics at an expert level.  All of these changes are here to help address that issue.

New Schedule

One criticism we heard a lot was that 45 minute sessions were just enough time to get to the interesting stuff – and then everyone had to roll to the next talk.  So this year, the schedule will be 1 hour for each discussion, followed by a 15 minute break.  We’ll make sure to put the schedule up on the whiteboards in each room so people aren’t thrown by the weird timing.

First Half / Second Half Schedules

This year, we”ll only put up talks for the first half of the day in the morning.  During lunch, we’ll open up afternoon schedule.

This change comes from the criticism that when a cool talk resulted from what of the morning sessions, there ended up being no room to have that discussion later in the day.

Expert Level Talks

Also in service to in-depth discussions, we’re asking people to label their talks as either “Intro” or “Expert” on the Big Board.  This will let everyone understand the kind of talk they’re walking into, and adjust their expectations accordingly.  Keep in mind, anyone should go to a talk they’re interested in – but if it’s an Expert talk, we’re going to ask that people hang onto intro-level questions they have until after the talk is done.  This might be a great chance for a discussion over beers at Cambridge Brewing Company that night!

This improvement also leads right into…

Empowered Moderators

Another criticism we received was that it was easy for talks to easily become divided between people trying to talk about stuff at a more in-depth level, versus people talking about the basics.  So, paired with labeling talks, we’ll also be adding official moderators.

In past years, most talks were de factor moderated by the person that put them up on the board – we’re just making that practice official.  The person that suggests a talk will put their name on the board as well (so, we’ll have the subject, the moderator, and the level), and they’re on the hook to keep their talk on track.  This just boils down to dragging things back onto course if they start heading into territory outside the scope of the talk.

Chat Rooms

Finally, we’re going to add some “Chat Rooms” – these are spaces scattered around the NERD center where people can continue discussions, do ad-hoc discussions, or just hang out.  This way, if there’s a crazy in-depth talk you want to do with just two other people, you can head to one of these spaces.  We’ll also have an area of the board up to list these discussions so others can find you as needed.

We’re looking forward to trying all this stuff out – and we want your feedback on it all!  Like any good unConference, we’re all about making this thing serve the needs of its participants.

And finally, one more time –  GameLoop is on August 28th at Microsoft’s NERD Center – it’s $40 for the day and includes lunch, a t-shirt, and maybe even breakfast if we can swing it.  Sign up now!