Thanks, Credits and Behind the Scenes - Castle Sprint

Sprint Organization

Additional to Tips for organizing a sprint from Kit Blake, I also want to share the experiences I made when organizing the Plone Castle Sprint.

The goals for this sprint have been:

• Make it effective as possible.
• Ensure that the sprinters have a nice environment
• Organize also some entertainment
• Marketing effects
• Keep it as cheap as possible for the sprinters

Keep it cheap

Keep it cheap Part one: Food

Through the experiences during the last sprints, I thought about organizing the sprint on Phils castle. Ok, not everybody can offer a whole castle, but in this chapter it's not the fact that we have a castle, it is the fact that we provided all the food stuff for the sprinters. (Ok, Zworks initial idea)

To have catering directly at the sprint location ensures, that people

• don't spend a lot of money in restaurants
• don't loose time through the way between the sprint location and the restaurant
• get more time for sprinting, since there is no reason for leaving the location in the evening

So this must be organized, ok it would be possible to outsource this completly to a professional catering company, but this would be very expensive and be against the rule "Keep it cheap".

The only alternative for this is to Rent a cook, and organize everything what he needs. To ensure that the food task will run proberly calculate the day where you expect to have the most persons at the sprint. At the castle sprint this was the middle day, means Saturday. We invited all journalists, guests, poztential customers for this day, and also the entertainment evening. So for this special day we had to feed about 60 people. So you have to organize dishes, silverware, glasses for several courses for 60 people. Thats a bit more then you will find in normal households. I solved this problem by asking a friend who has a restaurant, whether it would be possible to borrow this stuff.

The castle is big, but the kitchen is just a normal household kitchen, and to provide a 5 courses dinner for 60 people at the right time, runs you into the problem that the oven will be much too small. Ok a 5 courses dinner is the exception, but also normal menus for such an amount of people is too much. The solution are gas driven big camping cookers and big pots. The camping cookers are not very expensive, and the cooks are mostly able to organize big pots and pans. And professional cooks prefer gas instead of electricity.

Then you need a person for all the cleaning and for washing the dishes. Even if you have a normal dishwasher which you can find in almost every kitchen, just forget it, they take too long time to clean the stuff, so it has be done by hand. Alternativly you can perhaps a professional dish washers you find normally in restaurants, they are able to clean dishes and glasses within 5 minutes.

The next thing is that you have to think about having a car available which is big enough, that you get in all your stuff (at least the garbage) and a guy who assists you in driving. You will possibly be so busy with other tasks, that you might find no time if a cook asks for something which ran out and which he needs immediatly.

Don't forget to organize some big fridges and a cool place where all the raw food can be stored. unnecessary to say, that this storage place has to be in the near of the kitchen.

Drinking is important, and you can't imagine how much water, coke, juices and at least beer is necessary.

Vegetarians, (as already Kit Blake mentioned in his Tips for organizing a sprint which was shown to me first by Maik Roeder at the second Sprint day) can bring you into big problems if they are consequential. (Not you Gidon :) you are a very low-maintenance vegetarian )

Don't forget about the smokers, they mostly have not enough cigarettes, so buy some big boxes also before the sprint, you then can sell it to people during the sprint if the run out of smoke. If you self are not a smoker, be sure to have a person who will take all cigarettes you don't need afterwards. Also be sure to have some accessoirs for people who roll their own cigarettes, like papers, filters and son. This are things which doesn't cost you any money, but these details make the organization looking better. Before I forget, don't forget to divide the sprinting area in a non smoker and smoker area.

Another thing you have to think about is the fact that 40 people in average, over 5 days produce tons of trash. So plan also about enough storage for all garbage. Think about seperating garbage if this is necessary in the region you organize the sprint. Think about a place where you can store all the garbage in meanwhile, because it produces a bad smell very soon.

Keep it cheap Part two: Accomodation

We have been in the lucky situation that the castle itself provides a lot of rooms where people can stay during the night, and it also offers a big park where people can stay in their tents.

The most important people and even "early birds" should get accomodation directly at the location. For the rest check a special rate in hotel pretty close to the sprint location and reserve all rooms you need there immediatly. Ask the sprinters if they would like to share a room, or if they like to have a single room and who goes into which room by yourself. This ensures, that everybody has his sleeping place and if you make good negotiations whith the hotel and book a lot of rooms already long time before make this also much cheaper for te sprinters. This experience was made already at the Rotterdam Sprint in December 2002, and also at the Plone-Castle Sprint. (20 to 25 Euros per night). So in the case you don't have a castle, select a place for the sprint where it's possible to sleep, this can be an old fortress ;), ok no kidding now, a seminar hotel, a big property which belongs to someone you know and so on.

Buy also some stuff for washing and so on, there are always persons who forget tooth-brushes, towels, soaps and so on. If the location for accomodation is not a Hotel, you do fine by buying also some such stuff in advance. If nobody needs it, you can use this stuff for yourself later.

Reserve some rooms for unexpected things. So it is good to have one or two extra room reserved, just for the case somebody is visited by his girlfriend during the sprint, or it is impossible for persons who are visiting the sprint only, to get back home the the day.

Also, don't forget about the cleaning afterwards. You will need somebody who brings the Sprint Location afterwards into the same state like it was before. In case of a castle where you mostly find wooden floors, this may take more time then in an old factory or an office building.

Marketing

Organizing a sprint is a lot of work, but a great chance for marketing because a lot of the core team members are present, and therefore it's a good chance for journalists and tv teams. To awake their interest, contact them and tell them about the project itself, and how it's developed. They are mostly interested about online collaboration, so explain the usual way we communicate and what a sprint is. The extravagant the sprint location is, the easier will it be to decoy them.

It is a good idea to have a seperate room for journalists and and tv teams where they can make interviews. Specially TV and film teams need a very silent environment.

Also organize somebody who installs web-cams or makes documentation with a high quality video cam. the more material you can produce and give to journalists the better. Journalists are like coders, in principia lazy ;)

By doing so, you get free articles in big newspapers and or even in TV. Think about the costs you have normally when you need to pay for advertising.

Entertainment

When you organize a sprint over 3 to 5 days, think also about Entertainment. This is as more important as a city is far away. And this should fit in general to the environment. So for the Castle Sprint three concert pianists have been organized. But also for example organizing a Blues Band or something else is a nice idea. Avoid to bring in some interactive Entertainment, where people are speaking a lot and want to have interaction with the audience. Sprinters are mostly exhausted. :)

For getting those artists very cheap or even for free , tell them about what a sprint is and about the fact that we produce Open Source Software which is also free. If you find a local combo, explain them that people from different countries are coming and that also a lot of journalists or maybe also TV is present. So this is also good for their marketing, and if you have luck, they will play and you only have to pay them for their travel costs.

Check also somebody who jumps into the role of a DJ.

Technical Environment

You will need some hubs and switches, kilometers of batch-cables, and wireless accesspoints. In short mostly more that a little company can offer. To avoid that people can't connect, calculate at least 30 % more cables and hub ports as actually needed. People wanna move around at a sprint, and not everybody will have a WLAN Card, or some of them have to transfer a big amount of data from notebook to notebook, therefore a 100 MBit Lan based on cables is very useful.

If you don't have so much equipment in your own company, ask some of the Sprinters in advance to bring some stuff with them. The rest can be borrowed for example from a local hardware dealer, you have to ensure, that every cable and switch and hub is labeled where it comes from, you can't imagine what a kind of cable salad you have when all is over.

And you never can have enough cables and multiplicators for power supply ;) 45 computers takes a lot of power, don't forget about additional stuff like video beamers, lights, switches, heaters for the food on the buffet and so on and so on. If you plan a Sprint in a location like a castle which wasn't initially designed for something like that, check in advance that you can provide enough power from different circuits. Sit down and calculate before you start. We brought in electricity from three different circuits, to avoid that the old 12 Amp fuse responsible for the rooms we had is overloaded permanently.

For the internet connection you should have a good connection with a high bandwith also for upload, a standard DSL Connection with 768 DL/ and 128 UL, will be definitly not enough. But bidirectional 2 MBit was comfortable enough for over 40 people. If necessary check a high connection for that days. (We had it anyway for luck)

Calculation

This is the most risky point of all. On the one hand you should not organize a sprint to make money. Don't forget about the important rule : Keep it cheap. So, to calculate it in the right way is a real challenge. To say it in advance, the Castle Sprint calculation was perfect.

How to do this: Add all estimates you do by yourself and you get from the cooks together and multiply this amount with 1.25 up to 1.5. Why 1.25 to 1.5 ? The factor depends on how much risk you like too have and how exact your estimates usally are. You shouldn't calculate to make a benefit with a sprint, so it should be calculated in a way that you don't get a big minus on your bank account, and that nobody pays too much for food and accomodation. If some money is left at the end of the sprint and you get a nice dinner for you and your wife for the rest, I think nobody will complain, since the whole organization and the sprint itself will cost a lot of your family time.

And at least you must have some luck if unexpected things happening and some people help you out of that without knowing about that. For details see **Lessons learned - Organization - 1st paragraph)

So sit down on your ass before and think about all details described above and then multiply. In my case by organizing a castle sprint and money which was payed too much, there is no more to say as I just had this Dinner with my wife and my daughter. 3 Big Mac's and two portions of pommes frites ;)

This brings me to the next point:

Credits

The most credits from my point of view goes to the invited community it self. Thank all of you a lot for coming and making this event a real cool thing. And I see again, the Plone Crew is the coolest Community you can think about. Why ?

• Nothing is missing. We finished cleaning up today, and all switches, hubs and even network cables are here.
• Trustful Those of you who joined the sprint will remember that I put a box on my desk where I asked to throw money in for additional beers. The box was not locked up, it was open the whole time. All money was in and it was nearly exactly the amount of the uncalculated additional beer we needed. All litle nice accessoires like mobile phones and whatever never left the table where you put it to hours before.
• Nothing broken Nothing was destroyed or damaged in the castle. A miracle after a five day sprint with 43 participiants.
• And last not least, It was a big fun to hang out with you guys 5 days and nights.

The next credits to my cooks, Volker Fried and Daniel Bauer. They did a really good job along their normal work and their performance on saturday night cooking in sum 300 courses just in time in a normal houshold kitchen, is magic. BTW, they also had so much fun with this event, that the Plone crew now is one of the first, if not the first, Open Source Community who has own cooks, since they offered to repeat this job also on the next sprint. Thanks a lot guys.

And Vadetta, who cleaned thousands of dishes over all the five days mostly by hand, and the sprinting rooms in the early morning when we all finally found to bed.

Not to forget Phils family who lived just one door beside us, and spended their calm and privacy.

Also Phils nephew Lukas Auersperg, who helped me a lot by driving and driving again into the town to buy beer, cables and a lot of other stuff and hosted some of the sprinters in his appartement in vienna after the event.

And of course our families and wifes, specially Henriette and Evelyn for general assistance.

For the Entertainment part the three pianists Richard Joo, Coco Bahnholzer and Belinda Resibegovic who did this job mostly only for getting back their travel costs (which means the 80 km's from Vienna to the castle). Of course not to forget Leo Findeisen who was responsible for this Performance. Max, "Quasi" for his great video live Performance which was totally free, and also to Andre Hoeschele and Alois Huber who checked us Quasi and who were responsible for the sound and DJ stuff.

Thanks also to Ullrich "jack-e" Eck who provided us his network knowledge for the stable LAN and WLAN Architecture. (WLAN in castles with 120 cm walls are tricky :) )

Thanks also to Weingut Soellner who provided finest wines for the party at saturday for free

Lessons learned

Organization

• Next time I have to make clear already before the sprint, that the calculated fee is a calculated fee. Thats because the most costs are costs you have anywhere for all the time. The amount of physically food of certain persons doesn't make the big difference. I didn't mention this before the sprint, so I decided that this was my fault and reduced the amount for several people who stayed not the whole time. Some people volunteered (without be asked for that, another point that this community is really great) to give more, that was the diff I missed in calculation :)
• Next time I also will notice people to check their accomodation and food fee already before the sprint. This will save my time extremly. You can't give somebody my creditcard to go shopping, because something is needed, you need cash all over the time, otherwise your'e living in your car during the time.
• Next time I will organize better weather :)

Technical

• One guy should be responsible for a daily or half daily report through the WEB
• Don't allow to check in to HEAD during a Sprint, only in Branches
• Maybe only allow temporarily CVS accounts during the sprint.

Conclusio

Thanks to everybody for assistance for organizing and the efforts they have done. Thanks for everybody who visited us and enjoyed it. Hopefully the next Sprint is following soon, I already have a nice idea... ;)

• Thanks again

Zwark aka Robert Boulanger