Event planning for O-Day 2020, and notes from O-Day 2019.
For ideas and notes from previous years, see ODay2008, ODay2007, ODay2006, ODay2009, ODay2010, ODay2011, ODay2012, ODay2013, ODay2014.
Contents
Important Info
O-Day 2020 is on Friday, 21 February 2020, starting at 10:00am.
- Cars will only be allowed onto the oval until 9:30am, so if using a car for transporting stuff make sure it is packed and ready to go in time.
- Arrive at 8:00am for setup - it's early, yes, but UCC has a lot to do and your help will be really appreciated.
- Check the weather forecast, and don't forget hats, sunnies and sunscreen!
- Forecast is: Maximum 36C, partly cloudy. Winds easterly 25 to 35 km/h becoming light in the late afternoon.
- Sun protection recommended from 8:40 am to 4:00 pm, UV Index predicted to reach 11 (Extreme)
- 2019 stall was A21, 6x3m and near the Maths building.
T-shirts
- We have a number of polos still available, these will be for sale at the stall
- Door members may borrow a polo, but buying them is encouraged! Support the club!
- Bring a bunch of coathangers to put the shirts on display.
Grabbing New Members
- Arrange new-member escorts to the room - the bottom of Cameron Hall has a distinct "you're not supposed to be here" feel, and it would also give the new members a friend right off the bat.
- Make sure someone is available to keep the room open and talk to new members should they go there on the day.
- Try to find at least one wheel member to help with edge cases, otherwise door / committee should be able to take care of everything.
- Either team up with other Cameron Hall clubs for BIG A2 signage on doors and ground outside or go it alone.
- Remind people they get $5 of dispense credit with a new account and show them how to use the vending machines.
Posters
- Signage leading from the Guild Reception all the way to UCC would help freshers find the place.
Posters need to have the UCC name on them in an obvious way, rather than just being you-beaut pictures - it would be nice if poster designs were consistent, you can get the UCC logos from https://github.com/UCC/Branding.
- Have some information around the stall - try to get at least a few A3 posters with basic info such as our O-day wifi password, Discord links, what we do, upcoming events, etc.
Marketing Spiel
- UCC is older than the Department of Computer Science - 46th year in 2020. We are also older than the first UNIX users group, the Homebrew Computer Club and the Chaos Computer Club.
- Cool stuff:
- Internet coke machine - first one in Australia! (And the Southern Hemisphere)
- Snack machine that not only gets us snacks using a smartcard, but also gets us into the clubroom
- Clubroom - dozens of different sorts of computers. Eat your e-mail, read your lunch. Our clubroom is open more often than any club on campus.
- Access to webspace, e-mail, computers to experiment with, fully stocked projects bench with tools
- For CS students: an excellent way to get exposure to the stuff you won't get taught.
- Also, good place to organise with other smart people
- For non-CS students: a chance to play with the kind of equipment you only see in university and corporate environments.
- Good place to go for general computer help
- Gamers as well - LANs etc
- Not just a student club. Plenty of interesting people around
- People working on Mozilla, GNOME, Flock, Songbird (Yakk's still old guard, right?), Linux, Avahi, plenty of other stuff
We should down play this. UCC is a student club first and foremost.
- A social club, too - our myraid events like LAN's, programming comps, dinners, quiz night, pizza nights, movie nights
- Close relationship with other CH clubs - but you don't have to join them all
- Begin today by going up to the club, and come to Fresher's Welcome Pizza Night next week and AGM shortly after
Things to show off in the stall
- HTC Vive (if it works, which it usually doesn't)
- Oculus Rift
- Fancy Wireless Link
- Old things - floppy disks, DEC terminals, ...
- Member projects?
To Do
Well beforehand
- Check that the marquee is still functional - it is stored in a box on top of the machine room, has a number of white metal poles and plastic joiner pieces.
- The marquee can be set up as a 6x3m enclosed space. The roof and walls are not very good at blocking light so things like the Vive will probably not work inside very well or at all.
- Room cleanup
- Prepare and print the Fresher Guides (100-150 copies should be enough - ask at Uniprint a few days before or go to Officeworks).
Check that the signup system is functional and people know how to use it - either https://portal.ucc.asn.au or print paper membership forms.
- Design and print membership stickers
- Make posters for the stall
Find volunteers to help set up and run the stall
- Recommended 6 people to help with setup, 3 to hang around to run the stall during the day and 6 to pack up, and 1-2 people to stay in the clubroom.
- Find someone with a car to help move stuff from the clubroom to the oval
- Test the technical setup you will use - wifi antennae, hardware, software configurations etc.
Find a sufficient number of computers/laptops/tablets with bright screens (sunlight is annoying) and working wifi for people to sign up on (if doing signups online)
The few days before
- do a snack run, the machine has to be absolutely full
- print posters
- check that the signup system is still working
- Check that you have enough tagged electrical cables for the stall - Guild is sometimes quite fussy. It will usually be possible to get equipment tagged the day before, something like $3 per cable.
- check machines are all working, upgrade whatever needs upgrading, clear big/old cached user profiles
- Check that the network stuff still works and you haven't lost anything - get a box for all the cables and stuff you need to take down.
- If setting up the Vive - make sure that you can log into the machine you are using and that Steam and all drivers are set up.
- Remind volunteers what they are doing and check that you still have enough people to set up and run the stall.
On the day
- vacuum clubroom
- set up tables, boards, and marquee
- Collect any applicable equipment (such as tables and chairs) from the Guild
- make sure you reserve a computer for committee to add new user accounts with
- set up posters, banners
- make sure posters are up that lead from guild reception to UCC